Horst_In_Translation Review of Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment (1923)

Not one of the classics from the era I would say

[4/10 · 10 August 2017]

"Raskolnikow" is a German black-and-white silent film from 1923, so only a bit over 5 years until this one has its 100th anniversary. It is one of the more, but not most known filmmaking efforts by writer and director Robert Wiene. The English title for this one is "Crime and Punishment" and this is of course a much more known title as many will make the connection to Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel and Wiene, who was born in Silesia (Poland today) when it was still German adapted this one for the screen here. The original version went for over two hours, but the version of this film that you are most likely gonna get a hand on, namely the DVD version, stays slightly under the 90-minute mark even. Intertitles exist in several languages, the one I watched had them in English. This relatively late career effort by Wiene is one of the earliest films based on the Dostoevsky classic, actually the second oldest apparently. So many films were made on this one, but none of them really made it famous. This one is certainly among the top3 from all the versions out there I think and still it is fairly forgotten. Maybe the book is just unfilmable? I am not sure as I have not read it. Back to this movie here, fittingly with the story's origin, there are many Russian actors in here, not just Gregori Chmara, who plays the title character. Sadly also as a consequence of the low production values in this one I never really cared for the story or characters and I am somewhat glad it wasn't that long of a film. I'd really only recommend it to those rare people who love both the book and the silent film era. Everybody else can skip it for sure.