Mata Hari (1931)

Interesting in it's lurid time.It tells the story of Mata Hari, a spy for Germany in France during WWII who falls in love with a Russian pilot (whose name is changed for some reason) and is executed for spying.Now, the real interesting story was how the French government executed this woman on flimsy evidence, but that's not the story the directors wanted to tell. They wanted the one with the spy who fell in love and caused her own death.The movie drags on in places and would no doubt have car chases and explosions if made today. And usually, I say that derisively about modern cinema, but frankly, it would have actually helped this film.Oh, yeah. We don't see her get shot.

Audiences today have largely not heard of Greta Garbo, who was the queen of MGM from the silent days up until the time she made her last film in 1941. Her beauty was unrivaled with the possible exception of Marlene Dietrich, to whom she was often compared. "Mata Hari" tells the true story of the WW1 spy who conquered all with her feminine wiles. Garbo is beautifully costumed and superbly photographed in this film, which shows why MGM was at the head of their game even in the early-talkie era. Lionel Barrymore plays a good part in this and Ramon Navarro (who was gay in real life) plays his love scenes with the proper amount of nostril-flaring that went with the Latin-lover image he had fostered. (Although here he plays a Russian, or Rus-si-an, as Garbo pronounces it.) A fun movie that flies by fast.

Any resemblance to the little Dutch girl with a most interesting life for the prurient who became Mata Hari and this film starring Greta Garbo is strictly coincidental. About the only two things I can think of is that she was a spy and she did die by firing squad.Mata Hari had a fascinating life and was 41 when she met her demise and Garbo was 27 when she made this film. Her espionage activities only covered a small part of her life, her whole story ought to have been told. What this film lacks in facts it certainly makes up for in a kind of campy allure. Garbo is certainly at her sexiest as the woman who drives men of all ages mad with desire, so much so they wind up betraying their country. That's what she does to Lionel Barrymore who plays a Russian general who does same. She turns him into an old fool.But she herself gets good and foolish when she meets up with young Russian aviator Ramon Novarro. When she herself falls in love, it proves to be her undoing. There are a couple of really good performances here by a pair of ruthless adversaries. Lewis Stone is her spymaster and not a man to trifle with. See how he deals with another of his reluctant employees played by Karen Morley. He's far from the wise and good Judge Hardy in this role. His opposite number is C. Henry Gordon who knows full well that Garbo is a spy and is just waiting to nail her and I don't mean in the biblical sense.Mata Hari is a camp delight today, it certainly hasn't aged well. But that's not to say you won't enjoy Greta Garbo in this part.

While the arrival of 'talkies' didn't create screen icons, they did expand what we've come to expect from movies - an expansion that's never stopped.So here we have a movie that's all about men who worship an idol (Garbo), who herself plays a worshipper(Mata) of an idol (Siva), and 'outside the movie', we are expected to worship Garbo. It had tremendous possibilities, but alas, never quite achieved liftoff, due to the entanglements of dialog-driven plot and the insistence on panting close-up shots.By itself, this combination of stagy, two-dimensional filming and hard-breathing acting is nugatory, obsolete. But perhaps it's worth a look to appreciate the alto-voiced vamp, the model for Bancroft's Anna Bronski in "To Be or Not To Be" and Kahn's Lili von Shtupp from "Blazing Saddles".