"The Queen of Spades" @75: Faustian Bargains with a Gothic Twist
Sunday, June 30, 2024 at 9:30PM 
Some would sell their soul for riches beyond compare, fame and the immortality that comes with it, or perchance beauty, wisdom, and other such treasures. The Faust of Teutonic legend yearned for all the knowledge in the world and pleasure to go with it. When Goethe re-imagined him as a dissatisfied scholar, Faust sought to trick Mephistopheles by asking for transcendence. Compared to these bargains, the protagonist of The Queen of Spades seems modest in his ambitions. For Captain Herman Suvorin of the Russian army, the immortal soul is an appropriate price to pay for the secret of winning at cards.
Starring Anton Walbrook and envisioned by director Thorold Dickinson, Suvorin's story becomes the basis for an oft-forgotten gem of Gothic Horror that's also one of Martin Scorsese's favorite movies…
Premiered 75 years ago, this Alexander Pushkin adaptation was thought lost for many decades until a 21st-century miracle saw it re-discovered. Since then, the British classic has enjoyed restoration efforts and been brought back to movie theaters, its resplendence recuperated after much negligence. And so, the shadows recovered their depth, and the snow glistened like before, revealing a dark diamond of horror whose every frame seems gilded with silver, obsidian-incrusted. It's a feast for the senses, so rich it'll make you sick. I know I felt drunk while taking in its sheer beauty, all the more precious because it seems so removed from cinema today.
For once, the old adage "they don't make them like they used to" makes sense. Even when one contemplates directors whose heart belongs to old-fashioned techniques, to Gothic marvels like The Queen of Spades, the infrastructure simply isn't there to sustain a production quite like it. Because, all things considered, Dickinson's picture is no art-house creation with matching ambitions, nor is it the sort of prestigious affair that gets made with Oscars instead of dollar signs sparkling gold in the producer's eyes. Sure, it got a BAFTA nod and a spot in the Cannes lineup, but it's closer to the Gainsborough melodrama than to high art.
These realities allow the flick to find grotesquerie in its period tableaux, transitioning from historical drama to fantastic nightmare at the drop of a feathered hat. It moves through a story of karmic retribution in early 19th-century Russia, leveraging a couple of flashbacks and other narrative cul-de-sacs to better entertain the masses and pad itself. At 95 minutes, The Queen of Spades has an air of respectability it wouldn't possess were it to indulge in B-movie brevity. Then again, it might have aged better if it had. For all my talk of its broad appeal, there's still some stodginess in its rhythm.
If you pay attention to such trivial matters as narrative or character, that might be a deal breaker. If, like me, you get easily distracted by shiny things dangled before your eyes and will never get bored as long as a film keeps throwing gorgeous imagery your way, then The Queen of Spades will be a sure winner. Still, before getting carried away with formal flattery, one should mention the story being told. It's the tale of the aforementioned Suvorin who, in 1806 St. Petersburg, watches his fellow officers gamble their worries (and fortunes) away on the faro table. In Walbrook's covetous stare, the audience recognizes hunger fighting with caution. Suvorin will only play if he's guaranteed to win.
Curiosity draws him to idle gossip about an aging aristocrat, the Countess Ranevskaya who, rumor has it, sold her soul to the Devil so she could win at cards and secure wealth beyond her wildest dreams. To investigate, Suvorin purchases a book about that sort of Satanic deal and finds a chapter whose anonymized heroine is none other than the elderly Countess. The inquisitive instinct metastasizes into obsession, leading Suvorin to pursue the noblewoman's ward, Lizavyeta, to enter into their house, their secrets. He betrays a friend who was in love with the youth and seduces her through false affections, letters full of amorous lies concealing his actual avarice.
Even when warned, Lizavyeta can't help but fall for Suvorin – he's a dark, broody, and evil Anton Walbrook, so it's hard to blame the poor girl – giving him access to the object of his fixation. One night, Suvorin corners Countess Ranevskaya at gunpoint and demands to know how she did it. It's a beastly sight, staged for maximum Gothic menace, with the man looming darkly over Edith Evans, terrified with a face caked in old-age makeup that has her look like a corpse. The fright is too much, and the Countess dies without disclosing anything, sending her assailant spiraling mad, at the mercy of cosmic justice, ghostly hauntings, and even more bad luck at cards.
Apart from Walbrook and Evans, few other cast members leave much of an impression, though their dramatic plainness isn't of great importance. Under Thorold Dickinson's gaze, whatever faults they might have as thespians are superseded by their part as figurines in the director's extravagant designs. It all starts with the period setting, which the filmmakers exploit for all its theatrical flair. St. Petersburg never stops looking like a studio set, but that's part of the appeal, cloistering the characters in an airless mise-en-scène that almost seems keen on driving the life out of them. In this, Dickinson reflects the Count St. Germain, a legendary character who molds wax figures of his victims and then collects their souls in glass jars. To know Dickinson only had a week to prepare for the job is inconceivable, so assured is his approach.
A funeral in some grand Orthodox Church is as choreographed as a ball, joy and sorrow two sides of the same coin in the director's taxidermized view of yesteryear. Art director William Kellner stuffs as much detail as possible in the shots, always reaching for Baroque excess rather than the more streamlined – and period-accurate – Neoclassicism. Skeletons and religious icons are ever-present, sometimes displayed, sometimes hidden in the cluster, while every other surface must be covered in pattern, texture, or a fanciful painted motif of some sort. The image is so saturated with information it should buckle under the pressure or become too gaudy to be beautiful.
Yet, Otto Heller's cinematography keeps that fate at bay. It does this through noir-ish shadow play and a mobile camera that will serpentine through palatial interiors and sweep into close-up with equal abandon. The gloom homogenizes this glorious mess, which also includes costumes by Oliver Messel that run the gamut from decaying relics of the Ancien Régime to whispers of muslin over flesh with flowers and furs on top. If the frame could suggest odor, one imagines The Queen of Spades would stink of sweet rot, like a carcass bathed in a fancy fruit fragrance. Mayhap a note of rose powder over old flesh, and the smell of snow melting on dirty streets.
The sound work is just as exceptional and goes way beyond the High Romanticism of Georges Auric's score. Silence is leveraged like a weapon, signaling death and despondence, a stopped breath on the way to a panic attack. During a seminal sequence, clockwork becomes a sign of life, and its stop is death, rendering people as automatons caught in preprogrammed paths that lead only to doom. Rather than realistic, these devices make the world of The Queen of Spades seem even faker and hermetically sealed, as if pushing the audience into a sense of sonic claustrophobia. The cutting is much the same whenever it deems to show its hand, as when a card game unravels through a series of disorientating dissolves.
Considering the cinematic edifice he inhabits, Suvorin's downfall feels almost inevitable, divorced from whatever moral judgment rains down from the heavens to punish his insatiable hunger. The Queen of Spades, as a film, is the greatest monster of all, eager to bite down and finally devour the lost souls who've flittered within its maw for the film's duration. In that sense, Walbrook's maniacal endings, and even his early cruelties, seem justified. Or, at least, they seem like a natural conclusion. In the annals of Gothic Horror cinema, hopelessness is common, but it seldom feels as encompassing as it does here. Whatever shreds of light we see are illusions, faint window-dressings to cover the abyss.
The Queen of Spades is streaming free on Kanopy. There are also some fantastic restorations available on Blu-Ray.
Reader Comments (1)
I have always wanted to see this.