The Queen of Spades (1916)
* * * - Okay
There are 17 filmed versions of this short story by Alexander Pushkin. The most famous one is from 1949, stars Anton Walbrook and is coming up later in the Marathon. It's a supernatural story with a gimmick twist performed like a magic trick. You know there going to be magic and you even know when to expect it, so it's all about the 'what', which generates enough suspense. At 64 minutes, this thing is padded and then the padding is padded. I'm interested to see what the 1949 version does to justify feature length.