The Queen of Spades (film, 1916)

Behind the card game, one of the officers tells his friends about his elderly relative, the countess, who once had Count Saint-Germain discovered the secret of three loyal cards winning in a row. Hermann ( Ivan Mozzhukhin ), who never sits at the gambling table for fear of losing, lights up with the idea of ​​finding out this secret from the Countess. For this, he meets the niece of Countess Liza ( Vera Orlova ). The girl falls in love with him and gives him the key to the house. At night, Hermann penetrates the Countess's house in order to extort the secret of the three cards from the old woman. The Countess refuses to answer and dies.

At night, the ghost of the Countess is a drunk Hermann and calls the "correct" cards - a three, a seven and an ace .

Hermann puts at stake all his fortune, wins the first two bets on the three and the seven, but then he juggles, opens the peak lady instead of the ace and goes crazy.

The cameraman Yevgeny Slavinsky in this film was one of the first in Russian cinema to use a moving camera when shooting a scene where Hermann goes at night through a suite of rooms of the Countess's house. The mobility of the camera was supposed to show a strong excitement of the character. At that time, there were no carts for the camera, and the device was mounted on the Yermolyev bay, which they dragged into the studio for this purpose. We also used shooting from new angles - for example, a view from above in scenes where Lisa looks out of the window at Hermann and where Hermann stands at the tomb of the Countess - and night photography by the light of jupiter. Interestingly, some contemporaries of these innovations did not appreciate: Petr Tseihenshtein, a columnist for the Teatr newspaper, wrote in a review of the film that “moving rooms appeared on the screen, which sharply violates the impression of veracity” (Theater, 1916, # 1853, p.10 ).

A special booklet was published for the release of the film (probably for the first time in the history of Russian cinema).

• The film historian V. Vishnevsky assessed The Queen of Spades as “one of the best pre-revolutionary films and a classic example of screen versions of literary works” ^[1] .
• R. Sobolev calls the film a landmark and the best film of domestic pre-revolutionary cinema ^[2] . He analyzes it in detail on the six pages of his book, and, in particular, notes:

“Not less interest than the realistic interpretation of the story, caused by his contemporaries artistic qualities, the techniques of the director and cameraman, the game of actors. The film summed up the achievements of cinema art over the past years ... "The Queen of Spades" is a landmark work of cinema art, the first achievement of Russian cinema that is of world significance. If we try to define in a few words the innovative beginning of “The Queen of Spades”, then the first right should be put on the cinema right, open and approved by this film, for a true and profound display of human characters ... ” ^[2] .

Other film versions of The Queen of Spades:

• " The Queen of Spades " - the film by Peter Chardynin ( 1910 ).
• " The Queen of Spades " - a film by Roman Tikhomirov ( 1960 ).
• The Queen of Spades is a film by Janusz Morgenstern (Dama pikowa, (TV) 1972 ).
• " The Queen of Spades " - a film by Igor Maslennikov ( 1982 ).

• Review by Sergey Kudryavtsev
• Review by V. Raspopin
• The Queen of Spades on the Internet Movie Database