The Abdication

After Greta Garbo abdicated as Queen Christina of Sweden, she caroused through Europe for a year and finally came to Rome, where she expected to be instructed in Catholicism by the Pope. Somewhere along the way, however, she had become Liv Ullman, and now had to pass Peter Finch as Cardinal Azzolino. Is she sincere?

Peter Finch plays his role as if he's Laurence Harvey: dry, repressed, intellectual and prosecutorial, while Miss Ullman dances around him, serious and light-hearted, all over the shop emotionally. It's just the sort of movie that Anthony Harvey had directed with A LION IN WINTER. If the fireworks are not as spectacular, well, neither are the lead actors as big on the screen as Hepburn and O'Toole. This pair play guarded characters who show through in flashes, and must compete not only with their own natural beauty, but the spectacular location shots. It's a movie that requires a dedicated and attentive viewer.

I can see how it must have worked sensationally as a two-actor play by Ruth Wilson. When she opened the script slightly for the big screen, did a fine job. However the results fall slightly short of the director's earlier masterpiece. It's a fine movie, but definitely not one to watch on a small screen.

I'm really not a Liv Ullmann fan, but I was really curious to see The Abdication because of the premise. Made the year after Lost Horizon, she teamed up again with her costar Peter Finch and had scorching chemistry. It was a surprising film, and thought provoking, so if you're interested in religious dramas, you'll want to check it out.

Peter plays a priest, and before you think he has way too much emotion, sex appeal, and bad boy vibes to be convincing, just wait. Liv plays Queen Christina, rebellious, independent, and unpredictable. She abdicates her throne and travels to Rome to study and convert to Catholicism. Because of her wild streak, the Church doesn't take her seriously. They think she's just trying it out as one of her whims, and Peter is tasked with finding out if she is in earnest. Is it really that good of an idea to send a good-looking, passionate priest to a promiscuous, passionate woman? Probably not. The sparks fly, and we start to wonder who is converting and who is abdicating. Even though I don't usually like her, I'd definitely recommend this one.

I saw this film in the Ford rubber tree plantation in Belterra close to Santarém in the Amazon in the second part of the 1970:s.

Of what I can remember, there was a lot of forced horse-riding in the film, mostly by the beautiful, womanly Liv Ullman, who didn't had the slightest resemblance with the portrayed queen Kristina. Queen Kristina was known as almost ugly with a mans body, language and habits.

Sitting there in the middle of the rain forest in a warm and humid provisional cinema, with the projector rattling amongst the onlookers, I wondered if the spectators understood anything of what they saw on the screen. A story that took place 350 years before and in a country of ice and snow.

And me - who had read about the abdication in school, how the daughter to the king who had fought the catholic church, and died in the 30 year war, became a catholic - realized that there are ten thousand different ways to tell a story and this was not the one my historian teacher had told me .... or the one I had imagined!

I will never forget my first impressions while watching this movie so many years ago on TV. I absolutely loved it!! I was riveted to the screen by this complicated and multi-faceted person in history who I had here-to-fore never heard about.

This movie belongs right there with other historical classics produced from the 50's to the 70's. I still remember being absolutely fascinated by Liv Ullmann's performance. What a colorful character Queen Christina of Sweden was - but Liv Ullmann made her come alive with her portrayal of an OCD personality that gave me my first introduction into a disorder that I had previously never known about. I don't know if the real Christina had OCD or not, but that was what I remembered most about the movie. I would love to see it again.

In the 17th century, Queen Christina of Sweden gives up her Protestant throne and journeys to Rome to embrace Catholicism; her past (possibly chequered) as well as her present motives are examined closely by a Cardinal, with whom she falls in love. Ruth Wolff's adaptation of her play is interesting and literate, but director Anthony Harvey unfortunately strives to make a grand spectacle out of what is basically an intimate two-character stage drama (and so we get stand-alone location shots of cathedrals and castles photographed from all different angles). Christina, having been raised since girlhood with a crown on her head, was apparently brought up like a boy, and so Liv Ullmann has been encouraged to be belligerent and impolite (it works for a while, and the lowering of her voice is initially an exciting change for the actress). Peter Finch is unobtrusive as Cardinal Azzolino; he stays out of Ullmann's way, acknowledging her speeches with pensive little smiles (much the same way Finch did in his scenes with Ullmann the year before in "Lost Horizon"). The film certainly had possibilities as a moving platonic-romance story, but it just misses. Nino Rota's ornate score is too insistent (it draws attention to itself), while the flashbacks to Christina's unhappy life back in Sweden begin to feel like speedbumps. Ullmann's Christina becomes too weepy and 'womanly' after declaring her love for Cardinal Finch, though their final scene together is actually quite lovely, meaning the movie does work on occasion. ** from ****