Imprint Films has played a great hand with their Blu-ray (debut) of The Queen of Spades, the 1949 horror film famously beloved by filmmakers like Martin Scorsese. They’ve stacked the deck with special features, including three commentary tracks, an introduction by Martin Scorsese, and archival interviews. But what’s most impressive is how it sounds. This mono mix manages to preserve the most important element of the film, its sonic specter.
Based on the Alexander Pushkin short story, The Queen of Spades is a morality tale about ambition, class, and honesty, all intersecting at the gambling tale. When Herman Suvorin (Anton Walbrook (The Red Shoes; Gaslight)), a captain in the Russian military’s engineering corps is invited by his friend Andrei (Ronald Howard (The Browning Version; Murder She Said)) to participate in a game of debauchery playing cards and dancing with Romani women, his satisfaction with his station in life is shaken. Watching younger officers born into wealth and connection bet years of salary on single hands while he scrimps and saves in order to invest in a savings plan, Suvorin dreams of finding a way to win at cards without risk, and unlock the next rung of the social ladder. When he encounters a book of secrets in a mysterious bookstore, he becomes obsessed with the story of a Countess Ranevskaya (Edith Evans (Tom Jones; The Nun’s Story)), who once sold her soul in order to find “the secret of the cards,” a magical order of cards to play in the game of Faro in order to win every time. In order to get close to her, he must overcome his awkward ways and seduce the countess’s ward, Lizavetta Ivanova (Yvonne Mitchell (Sapphire; Yield to the Night)), the apple of his friend Andrei’s eye.
L-R: Anton Walbrook as Herman Suvorin and Yvonne Mitchell as Lizavetta Ivanov in Thorold Dickinson’s 1949 Horror film THE QUEEN OF SPADES. Image courtesy of Imprint Films.
It’s easy to miss because it’s not auto-qued nor does it pop up in a prompt box when you click start, but this Martin Scorsese introduction is one of the better filmmaker introductions you’ll find on a boutique Blu-ray, though his stance that it’s “the rare classic of supernatural cinema” is the type of off-hand judgmental remark that deserved the skeptical pushback that his superhero comment sparked. There are many classics of supernatural cinema, just like there are many ways the influence on Scorsese’s uvre is apparent, the shadowy photography, the unknowing opposition of the two friends at the heart of the film, the pursuit of ill-gotten gains as a shortcut for class ascension, and the bumbling man attempting to climb that ladder. Suvorin is a clever man who feels held back by the station of his birth, and he is, but he’s also a haughty idiot. We all know the type and recognize him from Scorsese films like Goodfellas (1990), Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), and The Departed (2006), he’s obviously intelligent and worthy of more than he’s gained in almost every way, but he also thinks his smarter-than-average brain is a generation-defining intellect. In short, an annoying asshole who we sometimes like. Walbrook walks this tightrope while hiding the effort of it. In one standout scene, Suvorin is revealed to have been copying love letters from books and passing them off as his own. The apparent self-satisfaction we know he had is a dryly hilarious contrast with Andrei’s exasperation.
Today’s audiences might also sigh a little more with exasperation than audiences in 1949 did for two reasons. The first is that the card game that centers in the plot, Faro, is completely unfamiliar to the modern movie watcher, and its rules are not considered important beyond the mechanic of guessing cards. It is eventually explained in the climax of the film through clever cinematic language, but it can be frustrating to watch the cast fight over a magical ability to win at a card game you don’t understand for so long. The second is that the character of Lizavetta is incredibly naive as a plot point, but her love-struck stupidity is at times so egregious as to reveal an underbaked layer to this cinematic casserole. As far as mid-century depictions of virginal, sheltered women goes, Deborah Kerr (Black Narcissus; The Innocents) in Separate Tables, (1958) she is not.
The film reaches its zenith when it plays its most haunting notes, creating terror entirely through score and foley; it’s a moment to behold, and to hear. Imprint is clearly proud of this release and it’s packed largely with extras for your ears, sporting two excellent film historian commentaries and two archival audio interviews with Thorold Dickinson (Gaslight; Secret People) to fulfill your cinephile dork wishes. You can bet on it.
The Queen of Spades Special Features:
- 1080p High-definition presentation on Blu-ray from a 4K restoration of the original nitrate negative
- *NEW* Audio Commentary by critic and film historian Pamela Hutchinson
- Audio Commentary by film historian Nick Pinkerton
- Introduction by Martin Scorsese
- *NEW* Luck of the Cards – previously unreleased interview with actor Michael Medwin
- Anna Bogutskaya plays The Queen of Spades
- The Nightmare People – Thorold Dickinson on Saturday Night at the Movies
- Analysis of The Queen of Spades by Philip Horne
- Archival Audio Interview with Thorold Dickinson (1951)
- Archival Audio Interview with Thorold Dickinson (1968)
- Behind the Scenes Stills Gallery
- Original Trailer
- Audio English LPCM 2.0 Mono
- Original Aspect Ratio 1,37:1
- Optional English Subtitles
Available on Blu-ray June 5th, 2024.
For more information, head to the official Imprint Films The Queen of Spades webpage.
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Categories: Films To Watch, Home Release, Recommendation
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