An adaptation of the novel by the Russian writer Ilya Ehrenburg, this film by the great German master G. W. Pabst (Pandora’s Box, Joyless Street) relates the story of Jeanne’s flight from civil war in the Crimea, where her Bolshevik lover has assassinated her diplomat father, and her relocation to a new life in a very modern Paris, full of corruptions and betrayals. As always, Pabst is more concerned with psychological contexts and scrupulously recreated settings—that is, in the physical and social worlds in which people actually move—than in the melodramatic plot. The film’s rich visual articulation is dedicated to the expression of mood, which has been called “perfect in its tension and understanding.”

Live piano accompaniment by Martin Marks.