Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!
There are times when I will get kind of locked onto a particular movie that I can’t find because of the name. That’s definitely been the case for some reason with The Queen of Spades, a late-1940s film that has a number of horror elements. This is very much a period piece, and it has the sort of connection to horror that many films of the time did. This isn’t genuinely scary in any real sense, but it touches on the supernatural and at least tells the audience that there are demonic forces involved. For post-war society, that was probably enough to get people squeamish.
The film takes place in 1806 Russia, in both military and societal circles. The military men spend their time playing a game they call faro, and it seems to be based on a real game. While it’s never fully explained, the game seems to work like this. One player picks a card from his own deck of cards and places it face down. The dealer then goes through his own deck of cards, separating it one by one into two piles. If the player’s card comes up in the dealer’s half of the deck, the dealer wins. If it comes up in the player’s half, the player wins. While the men play, engineer Captain Herman Suvorin (Anton Walbrook) watches, intrigued, but never betting. We learn soon enough that he is far from wealthy, a fact that he attributes to his lack of upward mobility through the ranks.
