Although it would be invidious to slight the multiple skills that organized the complex wonders... it must be allowed that their manifold efforts would have missed fruition without the compelling performances of Anton Walbrook and Edith Evans.

Full Review | Jan 18, 2024

A score by the great Georges Auric nags and needles, but Dickinson is also at home to eerie silences. Walbrook does something bleaker and frostier with his chiselled good looks than he later managed for Powell in The Red Shoes.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 3, 2023

The visual style is baroque horror noir (lots of tilted camera angles), and the central performance from Anton Walbrook as the desperate Captain Herman positively buzzes with pressure-cooker intensity.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 27, 2022

if youre tiring of jump-scares and monster masks, The Queen of Spades is almost certainly the best ghost story youve never seen

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 19, 2022

... full of big ideas and grand feelings along with the psychological intrigue and hint of the supernatural that give this film a special edge.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Oct 19, 2019

The Queen of Spades, a stylish, polished melodrama based on the Pushkin novella, is [Thorold Dickinson's] most accomplished film.

Full Review | Oct 18, 2016

Otto Heller's chiaroscuro cinematography and Oliver Messel's Gothic designs play vital roles in Dickinson's thorough demolition of period genteelness for the horror in it.

Full Review | Oct 18, 2016

The Queen of Spades is a treasured relic of a time when the British cinema momentarily abandoned its good manners and revelled gloriously in visual and emotional excess.

Full Review | Oct 18, 2016

Though it does not run as smoothly as other films directed by Thorold Dickinson, it is an outstanding and worthwhile production.

Full Review | Oct 18, 2016

The story develops a morbidly exciting grip thanks to the maniacally superstitious Walbrook and Evans's otherworldly chill -- the funeral scene alone will make you jump.

Full Review | Oct 18, 2016

I regret to say I think it is more of a curio than a classic.

Full Review | Oct 18, 2016

It's beautifully lit and photographed, capturing the decadence of old St Petersburg before the Napoleonic Wars, and creates a wonderful atmosphere of tension in its depiction of a Faustian pact.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Oct 18, 2016

A masterfully filmed surreal atmospheric supernatural tale.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Oct 19, 2014

The density of visual detail and incident on screen is superb and the swirling, delirious onrush of storytelling is addictive.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 6, 2010

A black-and-white gem that truly deserves to be hailed as a 'lost classic'.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 15, 2010

This is a little-seen film that deserves to find an audience.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 24, 2009

Opulence of Imperial Russia at the beginning of the 19th century provides a colorful background for this filmization of Alexander Pushkin's short story, which brings to the screen a legend of gambling and intrigue.

Full Review | Mar 26, 2009

Wild gypsy dancing, shadow lighting and an excellent musical score are well used for mood creation in this weirdly fascinating film.

Full Review | May 6, 2008

Pushkin's marvellously histrionic tale of cupidity and terrible vengeance gets a suitably wild-eyed treatment in Thorold Dickinson's 1949 film.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 9, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 29, 2005