"Though based on an old play that even in the silent period had been considered old hat, director Raoul Walsh, cameraman James Wong Howe and a bravura villain performance from Lionel Barrymore bring this film to roaring and fast-paced life. Set in Czarist Russia, the colorful plot has Jewess Elissa Landi forced to masquerade as a prostitute in order to get the travel papers necessary to visit her dying father. A callow British journalist, played by Laurence Olivier, isn't much help. Boris Karloff scores in a minor role as a lecherous Russian soldier." William K. Everson