Thursday, June 21, 2012

The Yellow Ticket (1918)

Directed by Victor Janson and Eugen Illes
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Emphasis Entertainment)

Pola Negri takes an assumed name to study abroad in Russia, avoiding discrimination because of her Jewish heritage. However, she lives in poverty under her real name, where her landlady forces her into the underground sex business. She excels in school, but one night is recognized at a "nightclub". Warsaw stands in for St. Petersburg, and there are some interesting location shots in the Jewish ghetto. However, rather than exploring the more interesting theme, at least to modern viewers, of racism, the plot instead opts to go in an entirely different, and melodramatic, direction.

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