The Yellow Ticket Movie Review

Many of the films at 1995's 15th annual Jewish Film Festival reflected on the pioneering spirit necessary for survival over the long haul. The selections dated back as far as 1918 when a 24-year-old Polish actress named Pola Negri made Victor Janson's The Yellow Ticket in Warsaw. Her character wants to make medicine her life, but the only way the fledgling actress can afford to do that is through prostitution in a St. Petersburg brothel. Her brilliant medical future is threatened when another student (with whom she is romantically involved) discovers her source of financial aid. Negri had a long career in films: she made Gypsy Blood, Passion, and One Arabian Night for Ernst Lubitsch between 1918 and 1921; she starred in Mauritz Stiller's Hotel Imperial in 1927; she made the screwball comedy Hi Diddle Diddle for Andrew L. Stone in 1943; and she even appeared opposite Hayley Mills in the 1964 Disney film The Moon-Spinners. When Negri died in 1987, she had outlived most of the other stars of the silent era.

1918 68m/B GE Pola Negri; D: Victor Janson.