Raskolnikow (film)

Raskolnikow is a 1923 German silent drama film directed by Robert Wiene. The film is an adaptation of the 1866 novel Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

The film is characterised by Jason Buchanan of AllMovie as a German expressionist view of the story: a "nightmarish" avant-garde or experimental psychological drama. It premiered at the Mozartsaal in Berlin.

Cast

 * Gregori Chmara as Rodion Raskolnikow
 * Elisabeta Skulskaja as Mother of Rodion Raskolnikow
 * Alla Tarasova as Sister of Rodion Raskolnikow
 * Andrei Zhilinsky as Rasumichin
 * Mikhail Tarkhanov as Marmeladow
 * Mariya Germanova as Wife of Marmeladow
 * Maria Kryshanovskaya as Sonja, daughter of Marmeladow
 * Pavel Pavlov as Untersuchungsrichter (investigating judge)
 * Toma as Alona Iwanowa, die Wucherin (the usurer)
 * Petr Sharov as Swidrigailow
 * Ivan Bersenev as ein Kleinbürger (a member of the petite bourgeoisie)

Reception
In a retrospective review by Tim Pulleine in the Monthly Film Bulletin that the film was "a conventional prestige opus of the day." Pulleine opined that the dramatisation of the novel was "tolerably effective, barring a few lapses into excessive histrionics (Marmeladov's expiatory confession of alcoholism might have looked extreme in a temperance melodrama)." Pulleine also found that the "most basic problem [...] is that the set designs create a rebarbative dichotomy within the film, since-apart perhaps from the sequences taking place on the stairway leading up to a pawnbroker's flat-the performers are not spatially integrated into the settings but remain obstinately on a separate plane of stylisation."