THE GREAT SINNER

US, 1949, 110 minutes, Black and white.
Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Melvyn Douglas, Walter Huston, Ethel Barrymore, Frank Morgan, Agnes Moorhead.
Directed by Robert Siodmak

The Great Sinner is a gambler. This film is loosely based on the life and experience and writings of Fyodor Dostoevsky. (There was a film version of Dostoevsky's The Gambler directed by Karel Reisz with James Caan in 1975.)

This film is one of M.G.M's elegantly mounted, beautifully photographed in black and white melodramas of the '40s. It has a very strong cast - a young Gregory Peck upright and then desperate in the central role, a beautiful Ava Gardner, Walter Huston at his crustiest, Melvyn Douglas at his most sinisterly suave. There are short guest performances, most effective, by Frank Morgan as a gambling professor and Ethel Barrymore as the Walter Huston's mother - sinisterly dying at the gambling table. There is a great deal of glamour as well as moralising, with specifically Christian dialogue and Christ-figures for the significance of the gambler and his sinfulness. Direction is by Robert Siodmak, director or a number of thrillers of the '40s including The Spiral Staircase. Elegant and interesting.

1. The impact of the film? Interest? The exploration of character, motivations and obsessions, gambling and drives? Period piece?

2. M.G.M. production values: sets, costumes, atmosphere? Black and white photography? Musical score and atmosphere?

3. The strengths of the stars, their star quality, credible performances?

4. The structure of the film and its effectiveness: the voice-over by Fedja? Gregory Peck's sincerity and moralising, self condemnation? The collapse and seeming dying with the flashbacks? Seeing Fedja in degradation? With Pauline? His explicit Christ grace and sinfulness language? The flashback and building up the picture of Fedja's decline and fall? The ending with the prospect of redemption, happiness?

5. The title and its religious tones? Weakness, vice, lies, the transformation of the innocent and upright, obsession? The significance of the specifically Christian language and images: the medal, the church,' the funeral, the focus on the crucifix and the ceremonies, the choir? The religious symbol of sinfulness, the need for redemption, generosity and charity? Repentance?

6. The relationship of the film to Dostoevsky, his experience, his novels? Art and reality? The dialogue highlighting the need for experience for the author? The focus on human character, conscience - the ego and the shadow? The upright man - pride and fall? Consumed by obsession? The possibility of being redeemed - by love, generosity? By self-expression and confession in the novel?

7. Gregory Peck as Fedja? A strong character? His interest in human nature for his writing. the train journey, the obsession with Pauline, the voice-over and his comment, her alluring him, his staying at the spa? observation, rationalising his interest? The life at the spa and its gentility? The general and his gambling, Pauline, the fascination with the professor and his continued losses? The encounter with Armand de Glasse? His observing the characters, observing detachedly the mathematics and chances of the gambling games? His wanting to save people from themselves?

8. The casino as a microcosm: 19th. century elegance, surface beauty, interior corruption? The effect on all who went to the casino? Exercising power, bad luck, the comments about despair and suicides? The general, his mother dying at the table? The degradation with borrowing, selling oneself and one's soul to such people as de Glasse, the professor and his train ticket, cashing it in, lies? An ugly world?

9. Fedja and his wanting to redeem the professor? His failure? His wanting to save the general and his daughter? Concern, involvement, the small beginnings, the win, the thrill of winning, the collage of luck - the growing pace of his wins all through the day, his nervousness, changing numbers, the closing of the bets? His getting enough money to save the general and Pauline? The encounter with de Glasse - and his shrewd refusal to let him pay the debt? His being tempted back to the tables? His growing in love with Pauline - going out with her yet going back to the table? Going downhill? Paralleling the degradation of the professor (and the significance of his funeral)?

10. Fedja as driven, losing all his money, offering his royalties to de Glasse, the growing insanity of his wanting to continue the games and raise the stakes? The Dr. Faustus imagery of his selling himself? Alone, victim of others and himself, unkempt, collapsing? His being driven to write?

11. How well did the film explore visually gambling, the gambling type, the risks, luck, numbers and patterns?

12. Pauline and her beauty, her reaction to Fedja, his calling her corrupt - and his later regretting this? Her bound to de Glasse and about to marry him? Her father? The change in her attitude, falling in love with Fedja? Her dismay at his downfall? Her reading his manuscript - and the prospect of a future?

13. The general and his reputation, borrowing from de Glasse, being bound to him, his gambling, his debt to Fedja? His dismay at Fedja's downfall?

14. His mother - and the telegrams announcing her illness and father and daughter not caring? Her arrival? Ethel Barrymore's presence and style? Playing games, her cynical remarks, gradually getting interested in the games, going to the tables - the raising of the stakes? Her silently dying at the table?

15. The sketch of the professor, his appearance, the comic touches, the compulsive gambling, his explanations, his lies? The fare and his cashing it in? Collapse, death? Funeral? The apparition to Fedja a shadow warning of gambling?

16. De Glasse and the icy sound of his name? Power, management, corrupt. ruthless? Hold over the general and Pauline? Manipulating Fedja into gambling? His revenge on Fedja's trying to save the professor?

17. The finale with an atmosphere of conversion and repentance. the therapeutic effect of writing the novel? Pauline reading it?

18. The atmosphere of the 19th. century., 19th. century lifestyle., fiction?