CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

USSR, 1970, 200 minutes, Black and white.
Victoria Fyodorova, Georgi Taratorkin.
Directed nu Leo Kulidzhanov.

Crime and Punishment is the classic Dostoyevsky novel. It was brought to the screen by the Russians most solemnly. With a 3 hour running time, black and white photography and widescreen, moving at a very leisurely and serious pace, it was very much a Soviet presentation of Dostoyevsky’s story and insights.

The film is heavy going but it presents the novel in its entirety and is a good visualisation of it. Josef von
Sternberg made a version of it in Hollywood in 1935 and compressed it to about 88 minutes. If is surprising that so
many of the elements of Dostoyevsky’s novel are present in the Hollywood version. Many of the details are tellingly portrayed and there is a sense of the momentum of the novel.

1. Audience expectations of the classic novel? Of the 19th century themes and treatment? Of a portrait of Russia in the 19th century? How well did the film live up to the expectations and portray this visually?

2. The film as a product of 20th century Russia looking into its past? How much insight into the present. the insight of the present into the past and explanation of Russia, the Russian character, crime and punishment, justice, the individual?

3. The importance of the length of the film and its effect? Black and white photography, wide screen, music? The importance of the long sequences, the focus on faces and profiles etc.?

4. How much of the film was a character study of Raskolnikov? His talking, his memory? The opening, the encounter with the moneylenders? Seeing him in various episodes? How did the episodes build a portrait? As a student, poor, as a man?

5. How well did the film portray and illustrate his motivation? His character and motivation? To kill the moneylender, the other woman? Sense of guilt, responsibility?

6. His response of deception as regards the crime? His fears, covering up? Alternative blame? His behaviour during the enquiry and its ambiguity? What was the effect on him?

7. His double standards of acting? How much above the law did he see himself? Why? His rebuke of the official smoking and yet his guilt? The reaction and response to his landlady and her charging him? To his sister's suitor and the suitor's appeal to him, the news of his suicide? How did these affect him?

8. The characterisation of Sonya, her background, the streets, family? Her father? Mother? The importance of the deaths? What did she do for Raskolnikov? How did she help him to see more clearly? Guilt and innocence?

9. The significance of his mother's presence, her expectations of him, her worries about his sister and her marrying? His sister and poverty, admiration of him, her suitors, loving his friend?

10. The importance of poverty, hunger? What comments on Russian society of the 19th. century? His reliance on his friend in times of need, Sonya?

11. The portrait of the police inspector and what he represented and symbolised? The law, his manner, friendliness?

12. The importance of study, the article, the change in Raskolnikov?

13. The development of Raskolnikov’s principles? Their being tested by the inquiry of the police officer? The conflict and confrontation that they led to?

14. Themes of guilt, responsibility? Reparation and expiation? Life, death, suicide?

15. How was the final confession reached? What motivated him? The influences on his confession the effect? Humility, purging himself of his guilt? What future?