Crime and Punishment

Discuss releases from Arrow and the films on them.

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Calvin
Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2011 11:12 am

Re: Crime and Punishment

#26 Post by Calvin » Fri Jul 03, 2020 6:26 am

I finally got round to watching the Arrow disc and enjoyed it even more this time around. I don't think it does Dostoevsky justice; it's takes a decidedly homeopathic approach to adaptation that Sternberg himself dismissed as "no more related to the true text of the novel than the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Gower is related to the Russian environment." However, I do think the film contains Lorre's finest performance, playing off his own physical features with Raskolnikov's idolisation of Napoleon - one of Nietzsche's übermenschen, which might carry more connotations to the viewer in retrospect than it did in 1935, given the country that Lorre had just left a few years earlier.

Crime and Punishment would be the first of Sternberg's two picture deal with Columbia, the next being The King Steps Out which has never been released on DVD as far as I can see? It doesn't sound like I'm missing much, but I do wonder where the rights sit; Park Circus doesn't list it, as it does Crime and Punishment, in the Sony catalog.

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