CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

The mastery with which Robert Wiene – who became famous with THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI – realized the character’s “soul moods“ (again by using architecture like the seemingly endless staircase in the murder victim’s house) was already highlighted in the first reviews in 1923. Wiene stayed close to the literary model “Crime and Punishment”: The student Raskolnikow kills a greedy pawnbroker whose sister also dies in the process. Raskolnikow tries to justify his deed through a theory of the superhuman being. But the religious prostitute Sonja Marmeladova brings him to his senses. The main characters in this film, which is often regarded as the last great work of the German expressionism, are played by actors from the Artist Theatre in Moscow: This German-Russian cooperation is another aspect why Wiene’s film is one of the best pre-war film adaptations of Dostojevskij’s work, since Russian acting art after Stanislavskij‘s method is supplemented with the expressionistically changed architecture.