Columbia Pictures
Directed by Josef von Sternberg
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(Turner Classic Movies)
Peter Lorre is Dostoevsky's Roderick Raskolnikov, timid student turned paranoid killer, pitted against police inspector Porfiry in a battle of wills. Lorre practically recites many of his lines in an impersonal performance derivative of his Hans Beckert character in Fritz Lang's M just a few years earlier. Dostoevsky's story is bastardized by Hollywood hacks into an unrecognizable police mystery. Director Sternberg manages to inject a poetic scene or two, for instance some nice shots of water ripples for symbolism, that harken to the original story, but otherwise it's an infuriating experience given the source material and cast.
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