One of the director's rarely seen triumphs of lyrical realism-"among the culminating works of silent cinema, a grand attempt to synthesize Soviet montage, Hollywood action-melodrama, and German mise-en-scène" (J. Hoberman, Village Voice). The eponymous heroine (Edith Jehanne) is a diplomat's daughter who falls in love with a Bolshevik agent, a relationship that takes her from the Crimea, awash in revolution, to a Paris too jaded to care. In adapting a popular melodramatic novel, 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 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, Int'l Dictionary of Films)