The eponymous heroine (Édith Jéhanne) is a diplomat’s daughter who falls in love with a Bolshevik agent, a relationship that takes her from Crimea, awash in revolution, to Paris. In adapting a popular melodramatic novel, G. W. Pabst was trying to “pass” at UFA studios, while at the same time expressing his interest in Communist ideas through a backdrop that brilliantly observes the historical upheavals of the moment. His “sensitive awareness of character and environment . . . his individual style of linking image to create a smoothly flowing pattern induced a rhythm which carried the spectator into the very heart of the matter” (Liam O’Leary, International Dictionary of Films).