Very disappointed :(

Did you people see the same film I saw?

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Blistering performances.

. . . why NOT watch Greta Garbo elevate a historical woman who used her privates to literally send millions of privates to their deaths as "the Jerry's" top spy? Why NOT present Ms. Mata as the reincarnation of Saint Joan of Arc? (Blasphemy always has been one of Hollywood's favorite pastimes; all that's needed to transform a couple of homely people with bad teeth and poor hygiene into cherubic cop killers is to hire Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty to "portray" BONNIE & CLYDE.) Tinsel Town has made at least 10 films featuring Satan for each of the ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD. Given a chance to recreate a heroine of WWI, do the movie moguls give us THE JEANETTE RANKIN STORY, I REMEMBER EMMA GOLDMAN, or SONG OF THE SUFFRAGETTE? Heck no; instead, a creature from the Black Lagoon of Infamy is dredged up from the murky depths and presented to a populace apparently suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder as some sort of martyr to chain-smoking and nymphomania. In the spring of 1945 Adolph probably would have loved to quote Garbo as the movie remake of his youthful spy crush, and simply say "I quit." But even Garbo cannot make a silk purse from a sow's . . .

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".

I know that this review will not be like most others for this movie. That's because although Greta Garbo's style of acting was extremely popular in her day and many still consider her an amazing talent, I just don't think many of her films translate well to the 21st century. Now some of her films, like Ninotchka and Queen Christina are STILL excellent films, others like Camille and Mata Hari just seem WAY over-acted. The performances are so over-the-top and silly that I find myself very bored by them.In Mata Hari, the best example of overdoing it are her dance numbers. The costume is one of the most outlandish I have ever seen--with billions of beads and sequins and the silliest Thai-inspired head dress. And, during this "dance", Garbo shimmies back and forth and everyone in the house acts almost like males in a Tex Avery cartoon with rolling eyes, wagging tongues, etc. I just didn't get it. This was supposed to be super-sexy but I just found it stupid and about as sexy as watching grandma dance. It's simply horribly over-done--period.The story itself doesn't get much better. Garbo doesn't particularly "act" sexy, but all men become slaves to her allures--gimme a break!! This movie reminds me of some of Marlena Dietrich's and Mae West's movies. They, too, at times played these super-vamp roles but I can honestly say that instead of sexy and desirable, they just seemed campy and outdated. As for me, give me REALISTIC acting and dialog or fun acting--not overblown tripe like this.UPDATE 9/2008--I tried watching this again. That's because I had hated the movie so much and Garbo is such a god-like persona I thought maybe I was being too harsh. Well, now that I've seen it twice, I guess I was wrong....the movie is WORSE than my first review. Bad history, silly dance numbers and laughably bad dialog, this film is pure crap. Only the cult-like devotion that some of Garbo's fans have have resulted in this movie having a decent overall IMDb rating. I can only recommend the film for its "camp value" and to see just how awful it is. If you do watch it for a laugh, look for Garbo's 100% unsexy and ridiculous dance number, Ramon Novarro's ridiculous casting as a Russian and dialog that is howlingly bad.