One of the most important films in Russian pre-Revolutionary cinema, The Queen of Spades was a prestige production by one of the leading producers, Yermoliev, employing the talents of Russia's most prolific and professional director, Protazanov, and its greatest screen actor, Ivan Mozhukhin. In his booklet on Mozhukhin, Jean Mitry writes:
“The title role, ‘The Queen of Spades,' was played by a remarkable actress from the dramatic arts, Yulia Shebuyeva, who sketched an unforgettable portrait of the old countess devoured by a passion for gambling. Mozhukhin, better than ever, played a haughty and seductive role, taking pleasure in producing shock while maintaining the conceited satisfaction of remaining unruffled. The name ‘dandy' was suggested. Baudelaire's definition (of a dandy) in ‘The Painter and Modern Life' fits him like a glove.
“What were then sumptuous decors, Yevgeni Slavinsky's photography, the carefully studied lighting which created dramatic effects and deepened the sense of space, the editing refined to a science, all made The Queen of Spades one of the first valid literary transpositions and, more specifically, the first stylish production of the Czarist cinema. By making a hero of a man obsessed by his hallucinations, Protazanov realistically legitimized the occult powers which were in the background of the novella.”