Director:                     George Fitzmorris
Written by:                 Benjamin Glazer
                                   Leo Birinsk
                                  
MGM 1931
Greta Garbo  :             Mata Hari
Roman Novarro :         Alexis Rosanoff
Lionel Barrymore:       General Shubin
Lewis Stone:              Adriani
C. Henry Gordon:        Dubois
Karen Morley:             Carlotta
Mata Hari: a russian spy, use her immaculate beuty to seduce men of importance, and steals documents from them. She seems fearless in her work, and convinced she can lure the whole world. Then she falls in love with a Alexis, a luitenant, and stars to get sloppy. People start to suspect her real nature, and set up a trap to catch her. In the meantime, Alexis in badly hurt in a accedent, and is blinded. Mata Hari is taken to court, and is sentenced to death by hanging. Mata Hari, now in despair don't want her true love to know the truth, and tells him she's ill and has to go through a though operation. The last scene shows Mata Hari walking to the place of the hanging.



Garbo gives a haunting performance as Mata Hari, and it's only too bad the script wasn't better. I think Garbo is at her most beautiful in Mata Hari. And it is her beauty in this picture people remeber, rather than the storyline.
"Mata Hari was one of Garbo's biggest box- office hits. People ran to the thatres to see Garbo dance exoticly in the opening scenes
"Mata Hari" is based on the real story about Russian spy Mata Hari . But the screenplay- writers seems to have forgotten what an interesting woman the real Mata Hari was,
and made her a dull woman with only
clichee`s coming from her mouth.Click
here to see if her beauty can compete
with Garbo`s.
Later, when "Mata Hari" was re- relesed in 1935, the film was cut, and many of the best scenes, as the opening, no longer excist. God damn the Production code!!!
The maybe most famous series of portraits taken of Garbo was made
for the promotion of "Mata Hari". The photograper was Garbos own fave, Clarence Sinclair Bull. One of the
best of them is seen on this page >>.
"The picure's strenght is all in the players; an important grosser on that account"
-Variety-
Photos from Mata Hari >>