The Yellow Ticket (1931)
Directed by Raoul Walsh

Film Review

This overlooked little gem from director Raoul Walsh is a compelling melodrama that offers an authentic portrait of pre-revolutionary Russia.  Lionel Barrymore plays the sinister villain of the piece with an evident gusto, his blustering avuncular charm adding a creepy lustre to the abject venality of his character.  Elissa Landi's performance is perhaps a little too theatrical to make her heroine totally convincing, although she looks good and has an effective on-screen rapport with her co-star, Laurence Olivier, who is impressive in his second Hollywood feature. 

Based on the well-known play by Michael Morton, The Yellow Ticket benefits from its atmospheric chiaroscuro cinematography, which prefigures film noir and clearly owes something to German expressionism (particularly the chilling prison sequences).   Walsh successfully builds the tension to a highly suspenseful denouement, employing the same techniques that he would use to even greater effect in his subsequent noir thrillers.

Film Synopsis

1913.  With Europe on the brink of war, revolutionary tensions are starting to build in Russia.  Jewish Russians are segregated, kept in closed settlements and denied the papers that allow them to travel freely across the country.  When she learns that her father is dying in a St Petersburg prison, a Jewish peasant girl named Marya Kalish resolves to join him.  When she is turned down for a passport, she has no choice but to buy a yellow ticket, a special pass issued only to women of low repute.  Marya arrives in St Petersburg too late.  She blames her father's death on Baron Andrey, the ruthless head of the Tsar's secret police, who makes a clumsy attempt to seduce her.  Back in Moscow, Marya meets Julian Rolphe, a British journalist who has been duped into believing that Russia is a healthier nation than it is.  Marya's first hand testimony of how Jews are treated and what life is like in the prisons inspire Rolphe to begin writing a series of critical articles.  Realising the threat Rolphe now poses, Baron Andrey decides that he must be eliminated, along with Marya...