Stubs - Mata Hari (1931)

Mata Hari (1931) Starring Greta Garbo, Ramon Novarro, Lionel Barrymore, Lewis Stone. Directed by George Fitzmaurice. Screenplay by Benjamin Glazer, Leo Birinski. Produced by George Fitzmaurice, Irving Thalberg (uncredited). Run time: 92 minutes. Black and White. USA Drama. Espionage.

While the film Mata Hari is based on Mata Hari’s life, hers is a bio that flies in the face of the Production Code that the Hays Office was there to enforce. A one-time exotic dancer, Mata Hari was known for using her sexuality to get men to do her will, which was supposedly giving her military secrets. Thought to be a double-agent working for both France and Germany during World War I, she was eventually executed for her treason.

Paramount was the first to try to tell her story, with producer Ben Schulberg wanting to make one based on the book Mata Hari by Major Thomas Coulson of the British Intelligence Service. However, based on claims by the German Consul General in San Francisco, Otto von Hentig, that the book was "one of the most contemptible pieces of war propaganda I ever read" and claimed that every detail of the story was "utterly wrong or misconceived,” the Hays Office turned down the idea, saying the book could not be filmed, as it was "a dangerous one to deal with from both the French and German standpoint."

Next, MGM took up the idea and submitted their own original script, which the Hays Office approved, though raising objections over Mata's dance sequence and the "bedroom situations” warning them about Mata Hari's nudity, her sexual affairs, and the portrayal of nuns as "parties to an illicit sexual affair."

MGM’s film was made as a vehicle for their biggest star, Greta Garbo, and production lasted from October 1 to November 16, 1931. The film was released on December 26, 1931. The film would turn out to be Garbo’s biggest film to date, and second only to Grand Hotel (1932) in terms of box office for the star.

The film was directed by George Fitzmaurice, a French-born director best known for The Son of the Sheik (1926), Rudolph Valentino’s last film. Fitzmaurice had been directing films since When Rome Ruled (1914) and successfully transitioned to sound films with The Locked Door (1929) and Raffles (1930).

Man (Mischa Auer) about to be shot for treason at the beginning of Mata Hari.

The film opens in 1917 and the audience is told through a card that during World War I, France deals summarily with traitors and spies. We witness as the firing squad shoots two men before a third (Mischa Auer) is offered clemency by Dubois (C. Henry Gordon), chief of the French Spy Bureau, if he will finger Mata Hari as a spy. When the suspect refuses to cooperate, he is shot and Dubois vows that he will someday find enough evidence to prosecute Mata Hari.

General Serge Shubin (Lionel Barrymore) invites Lieutenant Alexis Rosanoff
(Ramon Navarro) to attend Mata Hari's performance.

Meanwhile, Lieutenant Alexis Rosanoff (Ramon Navarro) of the Imperial Russian Air Force lands in Paris after a dangerous flight over enemy territory, bringing important dispatches from Russia to the embassy there. He’s met by General Serge Shubin (Lionel Barrymore) and taken to the embassy. He is told to wait in Paris for a reply, which will take at least 12 hours. Shubin lets Alexis know that he’s going to see Mata Hari perform that night and he agrees to let him come along.

Mata Hari (Greta Garbo) dancing for an appreciative audience.

Mata (Greta Garbo), is an institution in Paris and many men and women come to watch her provocative dancing. Her performance is supposedly risqué. Alexis is immediately attracted to her. He doesn’t realize that Shubin is having an affair with her.

Alexis buys Mata a ring to impress her. It works.

When Shubin is called back to the embassy, Mata, who has been told to report to Andriani (Lewis Stone), announces she’s going to the casino where he’s based. Alexis overhears and follows her there. She has come to gamble and another gambler tries to sell her a ring for 4000 francs so she can keep gambling. Mata is not interested, but Alexis jumps at the chance to buy it for her.

Mata Hari meets with Andriani (Lewis Stone).

Mata makes contact with Andriani, who instructs the beautiful agent to use her charms to procure messages and maps detailing Russian troop movements. He wants her to start right away, but Mata refuses and instead lets Alexis take her home, even though she doesn’t realize he is carrying the secret documents Andriani wants.

Alexis takes her home, but when she sends him away, he goes. He does return the next day to profess his love for Mata, though she is cool to him.

Later, when Mata learns that Alexis is carrying the secret documents, she sleeps with him and darkens the apartment so that her fellow agents can take the papers, copy them and return them without being noticed. After a night of passion, Mata leaves Alexis a note that she hopes will end the relationship.

Meanwhile, the ruthless Andriani, who believes that a spy is permitted no friends, emotions or personal life, has one of his spies, Carlotta (Karen Morely), killed for falling in love.

After this, Andriani tells Mata that she must continue her relationship with Alexis without becoming attached to him. But it is already too late for Mata. Andriani gives her the photos of the papers to get Shubin to send them to the Germans.

Dubois informs Shubin about Mata’s affair with Alexis, hoping to make him jealous so he’ll expose her treachery to him.

Dubois (C. Henry Gordon) of French intelligence manages to drive a wedge between Mata and Shubin.

When Mata arrives, Shubin angrily confronts her. Mata tries to prove that she does not love Alexis by showing Shubin the secret photographs she helped to steal from him. Unconvinced, Shubin calls Dubois to admit Mata is a spy. He then calls the embassy to report Alexis. In order to stop him, Mata shoots him before he can get through. She then burns the copies of the files in the fireplace.

Alexis arrives looking for Mata and she begs him to leave and to forget that he ever knew her. With Dubois at the door, Mata flees from the murder scene. Shubin’s murder is initially categorized as a suicide since Mata placed the gun in his hand.

Fearful of what might happen to his espionage operation, Andriani hides Mata and then tells her that her Paris assignment is over. He tells her to go to Amsterdam to avoid harm. Before Mata leaves, she learns from Andriani that Alexis has been injured in an airplane crash and has been hospitalized.

It’s dangerous for Mata to go, but when Andriani forbids her to visit Alexis, Mata resigns from the spy ring and goes to her lover. Mata takes the place of the nurse at the young pilot’s bedside. He is blind in both eyes and needs help with everything. But her true identity is revealed and she promises to never leave him again. The two make plans to see the world together, with Mata being his eyes.

As soon as Mata leaves the hospital, though, she is followed by the same Andriani lackey who killed Carlotta. She manages to ditch him, but she is arrested by Dubois and put on trial for murder and espionage.

In order to prevent Alexis from ever knowing about her crimes, Mata pleads guilty before the prosecution can call him to the witness stand.

Though Mata's execution has been set, she anxiously waits for a reprieve that never comes. Just prior to her execution, Alexis is brought to see her. He believes that she is in a sanitarium awaiting an operation, and is fooled into thinking that the prison is really a hospital.

Mata about to be led to her execution after one last visit with Alexis.

Mata asks Alexis to promise not to grieve too much if her operation fails and she dies. Alexis is led away while Mata is led outdoors, where the firing squad is prepared to execute her.

The film’s release wasn’t without some controversy as local censor boards demanded cuts. New York censors, for example, ordered many eliminations from the film, including the scene in which Novarro picks up Garbo from a couch, carries her into a bedroom, and slams the door; the subsequent view of the city at dawn; Garbo lighting the Madonna lamp; and "Andriani's" men carrying out "Carlotta's" body.

Mordaunt Hall, writing in The New York Times, called the film a “glamourous and romantic conception of the latter days of the life of the Dutch dancer and courtesan who was shot as a spy by the French in 1917.” He writes that the film is “beautifully staged and ably directed” and calls Garbo's portrayal “brilliant.”

He also points out that “Miss Garbo may not be any more like Mata Hari, whose real name was Margaret Zelle MacLeod, than the film narrative is like an authentic account of the spy's career.” On this, Hall is correct.

Born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle in 1876, Mata Hari became an exotic dancer in 1904 and became an overnight success from the debut of her act at the Musée Guimet in Paris on March 13, 1905. Adopting the persona of a Javanese princess of priestly Hindu birth, she apparently brought a carefree provocative style to the stage in her act. The most celebrated segment of her act was her progressive shedding of clothing until she wore just a jeweled breastplate and some ornaments upon her arms and head. She was never seen bare-chested as she was self-conscious about having small breasts. Mata Hari's career went into decline after 1912. On March 13, 1915, she performed in what would be the last show of her career.

Her spying came later, during World War I. At that time, Zelle was involved in what was described as a very intense romantic-sexual relationship with Captain Vadim Maslov, a 23-year-old Russian pilot serving with the French, part of the 50,000 strong Russian Expeditionary Force sent to the Western Front in the spring of 1916.

Maslov was badly wounded when he was shot down in a dogfight with Germans, losing sight in his left eye as a result. When Zelle wanted to visit him in the hospital but as a citizen of The Netherlands, a then neutral country, she was not allowed. However, the Deuxième Bureau (France’s external military intelligence agency) told her that she would be allowed to see Maslov if she agreed to spy for France.

Prior to the war, Zelle had performed as Mata Hari several times before the Crown Prince Wilhelm, eldest son of Kaiser Wilhelm II and nominally a senior German general on the Western Front. The Deuxième Bureau hoped that Mata could get information from him, even though he was only minimally involved. Zelle's contact with the Deuxième Bureau was Captain Georges Ladoux, who was later to emerge as one of her principal accusers.

She might have operated as a double agent, having offered to sell the Germans French secrets, but it was never clear if that wasn’t a ploy to get her in good with German intelligence. In January 1917, her German contact, Major Arnold Kalle, transmitted radio messages to Berlin describing the helpful activities of a German spy code-named H-21, whose biography so closely matched Zelle's that it was patently obvious that Agent H-21 could only be Mata Hari. The messages were in a code that German intelligence knew had already been broken by the French, suggesting that the messages were contrived to have Zelle arrested by the French. Apparently, General Walter Nicolai, the chief IC (intelligence officer) of the German Army, had grown very annoyed that Mata Hari had provided him with no intelligence worthy of the name, instead selling the Germans mere Paris gossip about the sex lives of French politicians and generals, and decided to terminate her employment by exposing her as a German spy to the French.

On February 13, 1917, Zelle was arrested and put on trial in July. Her principal prosecutor, Captain Pierre Bouchardon, was able to establish that much of the Mata Hari persona was invented, and far from being a Javanese princess, Zelle was actually Dutch, which he was to use as evidence of her dubious and dishonest character at her trial.

In the film, Mata pleads guilty to protect her blinded lover but in the real trial, Maslov declined to testify for her, telling her he did not care if she was convicted or not. She would be found guilty and executed on October 15, 1917. Despite media reports following her death, Mata Hari never admitted to spying for the Germans.

The film takes Mata Hari’s story and sort of inverts events to make a more Hollywood-like story out of her life. It is nobler to die to protect someone rather than die because that person didn’t care to help you. While her exotic dancing had given her a sexually charged reputation, she wasn’t dancing when she was supposed to be a spy, as the movie tells it. But this was a part of her backstory that MGM wanted to highlight, so why not mix them together? This is not the first bio that Hollywood has altered to make it more commercially appealing. And despite the Production Code and the Catholic Legion of Decency, sex sells.

Greta Garbo was a good choice for the lead. In many ways, her Hollywood persona made her a sex symbol, though one somehow aloof and unattainable. She no doubt had the same effect on the men and women in her film audiences that Mata Hari had when she danced in Paris. Garbo seems to understand that part of the Mata Hari character.

The Mexican-born Ramon Novarro had started off as MGM’s “Latin Lover” in response to Paramount’s Rudolph Valentino. Handsome his ethnicity was fitted into whatever was required, like playing a Russian pilot in this film or Judah Ben-Hur in his breakthrough film Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925). He’s good as the much too eager Alexis.

Having seen so many films in which he was crippled by two broken hips, it was refreshing to see Lionel Barrymore as a somewhat fit man in this film. He has the unenviable part of the lover who is played as a patsy by Mata Hari. He may love her, but he is nothing more to her than a task she has to perform. Still, Barrymore is good in the role, which shows his versatility as an actor.

Andriani is displeased with Cook-Spy's (Frank Reicher) work. Suicide is his Cook's only recourse.

Andriani was probably someone’s idea of combining Mata’s German contacts into one ruthless bloke. There is a scene in which he tells a subordinate he’s unhappy with to kill himself and we’re led to believe he does. Not the sort of role you would associate with Lewis Stone, an actor best known for his portrayal of Judge James Hardy in the MGM’s popular Andy Hardy film series. But Stone was a respected actor, having been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for The Patriot (1929), wherein he played a Russian Count. While we might not associate him with this kind of role, he was certainly up to the challenge.

While the film definitely takes liberties with the Mata Hari story, it is still a well-made film and one that is a good vehicle for its star Greta Garbo.