Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Thorold Dickinson
Starring: Anton Walbrook, Yvonne Mitchell, Edith Evans, Ronald
Howard, Anthony Dawson
Today, if a film production replaces its director at the last minute it
usually spells doom. Back in the days of the studio system however,
everything was so well planned that a movie could have multiple
directors and still come across like a unique vision; just look at
The Wizard of Oz or Gone with the Wind. Even British studios were run with such military precision, which
meant that when director Thorold Dickinson took the reins of
The Queen of Spades just a week before shooting, replacing
Rodney Ackland and rewriting much of his script, the result was a film
that appeared like it had been worked on by Dickinson for months.
Adapted from Alexander Pushkin's short story,
The Queen of Spades sees Dickinson reunite with his
Gaslight star Anton Walbrook for a ghost story of
obsession. It's a precursor to the sort of tales that would be
gruesomely illustrated within the pages of EC comics in the following
decade, with an unlikable protagonist ultimately getting their
comeuppance through a twist.
Walbrook plays Suvorin, a captain in the Russian military during the
Napoleonic Wars. We meet him brooding in the corner of a tavern while
his fellow officers play cards, swill beer and enjoy the company of
gypsy women. Suvorin is unhappy with his status. He's obsessively
ambitious, proclaiming how he wants to "grab life by the throat" like
some mad scientist working on creating a race of supermen. Suvorin sees
a shot at becoming rich when he hears of the wealthy Countess Ranevskaya
(Edith Evans). Legend has it that the Countess amassed her
fortune through gambling, having learned the secret of the cards via an
encounter with a sinister Parisian Count. Such knowledge came at a price
however, with the Countess required to essentially sell her soul.
In an attempt to gain an audience with the Countess and talk her into
revealing her secret, Suvorin begins a campaign of seducing her young
ward, Lizavetta (Yvonne Mitchell), writing love letters that
involve plagiarising classic works of romantic fiction and hanging
outside her window every day. Of course, when he finally gets to meet
the Countess it comes at a terrible price.
Looking a lot like Roman Polanski, Walbrook's Suvorin is a classic
horror short story anti-hero, so ghastly that you're rooting for him to
have the rug pulled out from under his feet. While this works well for
short stories, comics and episodes of anthology shows, for a feature
film you really need someone you can invest in to a greater degree. The
film is never quite as creepy as it might be, as we're essentially
rooting for the ghost. Our empathy, or perhaps sympathy if we're more
honest, lies with the naïve Lizavetta as she is duped by Suvorin, but
she could hardly be described as the film's heroine. Perhaps centering
Lizavetta, as Dickinson did the similarly victimised heroine of Gaslight, might have made the film more involving. As it is, it's a film that's
easier to admire than enjoy.
But there is certainly much to admire here. A product of the post-war
British film industry at the peak of its powers,
The Queen of Spades is as sumptuous as anything to come
out of Hollywood at the time, but with a European attention to visual
details. Despite being filmed in the unsuitable surrounds of Welwyn
Studios, sandwiched between the noise of a train station and a Shredded
Wheat factory, the movie boasts some incredible sets, filled with
shadowy intrigue by the lights of cinematographer Otto Heller.
Dickinson arrived to find sets that had been originally designed by a
newcomer to cinema who constructed them with little consideration for
the camera. This meant Dickinson and Heller had to adapt as though
shooting in real locations, which gives the film an extra verisimilitude
and convinces us we really are inside crowded taverns and aristocratic
ballrooms.
The movie's horror highlight involves a canny piece of sonic
hardwiring. Throughout the film we become accustomed to the sound of the
Countess dragging her feet by planting her cane on the ground, as though
she were scaling a horizontal mountain. When she later appears in
spectral form, we never see her, but the sound of those dragging feet
proves far more effective, coupled with a blast of wind created by
utilising a jet engine on set.
Dickinson does a remarkable job in creating a sense of time and place,
and despite the cast speaking with British accents, the snow-covered
sets and frosty windows convince us we're in the Russia of the 1800s.
It's just a shame there isn't more for us to become emotionally invested
in beyond awaiting an awful man's just deserts.
