Director – Thorold Dickinson, Screenplay – Rodney Ackland & Arthur Boys, Based on the Short Story The Queen of Spades (1831) by Alexander Pushkin, Producer – Anatole de Grunwald, Photography (b&w) – Otto Heller, Music – Georges Auric, Art Direction – William Kellner. Production Company – Associated British Picture Corporation.
Cast
Anton Walbrook (Captain Herman Suvorin), Yvonne Mitchell (Lizaveta Ivanova), Edith Evans (Countess Ranevskaya), Anthony Dawson (Fyodor Pavlevitch), Ronald Howard (Andrei Andreivich), Miles Malleson (Tchybukin), Ivor Barnard (Bookseller), Hay Petrie (Herman’s Servant), Pauline Tennant (Young Countess), Yusef Ramart (Countess’s Lover)
Plot
St. Petersburg, Russia, 1806. Herman Suvorin is an engineer with the military. Unlike the other officers who come from aristocratic backgrounds, he is penniless and stays away from the gambling games that they indulge in. In a bookshop, Herman finds up a rare book by the Count de Saint Germain about people who have sold their souls throughout history. It tells the story of the Countess Ranevskaya who in 1746 had a liaison with a man who stole from her husband. She then sold her soul for a winning hand in the game of faro that allowed her to win the money back. Herman realises that Countess Ranevskaya is still alive. He sets out to woo her young ward Lizaveta Ivanova with letters of love, all to get close to the aging countess and find the secrets of winning at the gambling table.
Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) is considered one of the greatest of all Russian writers and poets, known for works such as Boris Godunov (1831) and Eugene Onegin (1825-32). His promising literary career was cut short at the age of 37 in 1837 when he was killed in a pistol duel with his wife’s lover. The short story The Queen of Spades (1831) is one of the most famous of Pushkin’s works, gaining wider fame after being adapted into the basis of an opera by Piotr Tchaikovsky in 1890, as well as several film adaptations (see below).
This adaptation was produced by Anatole de Grunwald (1910-67), whose father had worked as a diplomat for Tsar Nicholas II but was forced to flee Russia with his family during the 1917 Communist Revolution, whereupon they relocated in the UK and de Grunwald became a scriptwriter and later producer. Thorold Dickinson (1903-84) was a short notice replacement as director. Dickinson had started out as an editor before turning director and made ten films, the most notable other work being the original film version of Gaslight (1940).
The Queen of Spades is mounted as what would have been quite a prestige production for the era. There is stylish black-and-white photography and lighting, which look exquisitely crisp in the dvd restoration. The production and set dressings have had incredible detail lavished on them – indeed, the richness of the interior dressings makes you want to weep that the film is not made in colour. You only need to compare The Queen of Spades to other films being made around this time by Michael Powell with Black Narcissus (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948) to see what is could have been in this regard.
Captain Herman Suvorin (Anton Walbrook) seek the secrets of Countess Ranevskaya (Edith Evans)
The main drama of the film doesn’t begin until some way in (where it is quite faithfully following Pushkin’s story). Anton Walbrook starts out seeming a character with whom you engage as a protagonist. The shock is seeing him emotionally blackmailing Yvonne Mitchell and then the revelations about him having used her to get to the countess. There is a splendidly dark and tormented last third as we watch Anton Walbrook go off the rails.
Other versions of The Queen of Spades have been made in Russia/USSR in 1910, 1916, 1960, 1982 and 1988 and a German version in 1927. The Queen of Spades (2016) is a horror film set around a production of the opera.
