What wold have happened to Yevgeni Bauer had he not died in a Yalta hospital in June of 1917, soon after completing this film? Would he have fled to the West, like his star Muzzhekin? Adapted and make his way in and out of favor, like his assistant Kuleshov? Backed the wrong political horse and been shot? Well, we can blame a lot of things on the Bolsheviks that they may have had little to do with, just as they did for the previous regime, but not this death.
The story is one of those Evil Mastermind Sets Out to Control the World -- or at least fashionable Paris -- that was fashionable back in the day. Vjacheslav Svoboda is a cardsharp; Nikolai Radin bankrolls him and tells him that he can make money, women, even nobility. As their success grows, so does their ambition, until they run into real aristocrats, whose lives and ambitions they begin to interfere with.
The set-ups and camera-work look like variations on Pre-War French efforts. That's not surprising; Russian film-making had begun when French companies like Pathe Freres started shooting there a dozen years earlier. Therefore, the camera doesn't move from one shot to the next. There are a lot of titles to explain the interesting story, but the overall effect is interesting, if not among Bauer's best.
