Crime And Punishment (1935) - Region 2 PAL Import, plays in original English audio without subtitles: Official Sinister Film Italian Region 2 PAL DVD release as pictured. English 2.0 Mono audio. Runtime 88 mins. Extras: Photo Gallery. Roderick Raskolnikov, a brilliant criminology student and writer, becomes embittered by poverty and his inability to support his family. When he sees a desperate prostitute, Sonya, degraded by a vicious pawnbroker, Raskolnikov, a proponent of the idea that some people are imbued with such intelligence that the law cannot be applied to them as to other people, decides to rid the world of the pawnbroker and thus save his family and Sonya as well from the fate poverty forces on them. When Porphiry, the police detective investigating the murder, encounters Raskolnikov, he finds a man nearly crippled by the guilt and paranoia his deed has burdened him with. But Raskolnikov clings with as much coldness and calculation as he can muster to his guiding idea, that some crimes ought not to be punished.
L**Y
It's no sin to kill a beetle ...
This is an Italian DVD which plays in English, with Italian subtitles that are easy to switch off. No English subtitles for the hard of hearing, and the only extra is a photo gallery. Great black and white print, although I had to turn the sound up.Dostoyevsky's novel was written in 1866, but this 1935 movie has a contemporary setting, and director Joseph Von Sternberg decided that much of the internalised dialogue and soul searching did not lend itself easily to cinematographic interpretation so he made it into a relatively standard crime drama about a game of cat and mouse between Peter Lorre's idealogical murderer and a determined police inspector. I found that perfectly acceptable, and Lorre articulates very well his character's egotistical justification for killing a heartless and hated money lender who exploits the poor, seeing her as no better than a beetle. However, he is soon plagued by guilt and begins to see that he is not like his idol, Napoleon, but just an ordinary man.Sternberg, who worked with Marlene Dietrich on a number of films, including 'Shanghai Express' and 'The Blue Angel' creates a nightmarish atmosphere with striking use of light and shade as a backdrop to the excellent performances of the main cast. Marian Marsh is not unlike Marlene Dietrich in looks, although more conventionally beautiful and very modern, and she pulls off the difficult task of making her prostitute character both loving and pure of heart.
A**R
Five Stars
dvd excellent working condition
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