A film that unfortunately hasn't aged well, despite it being MGM's 2nd biggest hit of 1931 and having considerable star power. Greta Garbo, Ramon Novarro, and Lionel Barrymore are at the top of the cast, and they had strong supporting players in Lewis Stone, Karen Morley, and C. Henry Gordon. Despite all these stars and a fascinating story of lust and espionage, the story as we see it here is unfortunately pretty tame, and not nearly as exciting as it should have been.
In part that's because the actual historical events were altered in order to give Garbo a redemptive arc - her character goes from sinner to saint, from stripper dancing in front of a heathen god to someone beloved by nuns, from requiring her lover to blow out a sacred votive candle before sleeping with her to a noble sacrifice to save him. The actual espionage takes a backseat to the script forcing Garbo into the usual type of role for her, one where audiences could be titillated but also feel her character's ultimate purity and righteousness, complete with Christian symbolism. The back half of this movie which trudges through her capture and trial is pretty tedious. It's unfortunate because the real story of Mata Hari is far more interesting.
The film also suffers from having been censored eight years after it was released. In their books on pre-Code films, both Mark Vieira and Mick LaSalle point out that the only version of Mata Hari that survives today is one that was re-cut in 1939. That was because chief of Production Code enforcement Joseph Breen required edits to any pre-Code films he deemed morally questionable if studios wanted to re-release them. The most painful part of this is that he wasn't content with just cuts to prints, he required them to master camera negatives - an unforgivable act if you ask me. So even though this is a pre-Code film, it too suffered from the puritanical effect of Code enforcement.
The first half hour of the film is where this hit hardest. In Garbo's first scene she does an exotic dance in front of a statue of Shiva, which culminates in her stripping in front of it. There is a jarring cut in between her writhing around while bowing before the statue and a few frames which survive of her naked behind before the lights fall. Later, when she and Ramon Novarro's character spend the night together, the moments where she seduces him by appearing in a revealing, diaphanous negligee are lost to time, as was the scene of the pair sharing a postcoital cigarette. Despite these kinds of cuts, the first half hour is the film's strongest, thanks mostly to Garbo and Karen Morley. It's worth seeing, but guard your expectations.
In part that's because the actual historical events were altered in order to give Garbo a redemptive arc - her character goes from sinner to saint, from stripper dancing in front of a heathen god to someone beloved by nuns, from requiring her lover to blow out a sacred votive candle before sleeping with her to a noble sacrifice to save him. The actual espionage takes a backseat to the script forcing Garbo into the usual type of role for her, one where audiences could be titillated but also feel her character's ultimate purity and righteousness, complete with Christian symbolism. The back half of this movie which trudges through her capture and trial is pretty tedious. It's unfortunate because the real story of Mata Hari is far more interesting.
The film also suffers from having been censored eight years after it was released. In their books on pre-Code films, both Mark Vieira and Mick LaSalle point out that the only version of Mata Hari that survives today is one that was re-cut in 1939. That was because chief of Production Code enforcement Joseph Breen required edits to any pre-Code films he deemed morally questionable if studios wanted to re-release them. The most painful part of this is that he wasn't content with just cuts to prints, he required them to master camera negatives - an unforgivable act if you ask me. So even though this is a pre-Code film, it too suffered from the puritanical effect of Code enforcement.
The first half hour of the film is where this hit hardest. In Garbo's first scene she does an exotic dance in front of a statue of Shiva, which culminates in her stripping in front of it. There is a jarring cut in between her writhing around while bowing before the statue and a few frames which survive of her naked behind before the lights fall. Later, when she and Ramon Novarro's character spend the night together, the moments where she seduces him by appearing in a revealing, diaphanous negligee are lost to time, as was the scene of the pair sharing a postcoital cigarette. Despite these kinds of cuts, the first half hour is the film's strongest, thanks mostly to Garbo and Karen Morley. It's worth seeing, but guard your expectations.