Thorold Dickinson's 1949 British classic, based on Pushkin's short story, stars Anton Walbrook as Captain Suvorin, an impoverished military captain in 19th-century Russia. Like many of the time, he daringly admires the meritocratic genius of Russia's great enemy, Napoleon, and is obsessed with gambling. Suvorin is galvanised by the rumour that ugly old Countess Ranevskaya, played by Edith Evans, has sold her soul to the devil for the secret of winning at cards; he plans to offer her a chilling new Mephistophelean bargain: he will take her sin on his own soul, if she will only tell him how to make a fortune at the card-table. Dickinson's film is full of shadows and mirror reflections: a self-doubting, self-lacerating world in which the horror of eternal damnation is counter-balanced by the thrill of instant riches. An exotic, fascinating film. (Peter Bradshaw)