At first, you are perplexed by the rather dogma-like TV technique of making this film, but the more you get used to it, the more you get into it, the more you like it. Actually, it's a marvellous Dostoievsky interpretation and adaptation amazingly true to Dostoievsky, even though it's all TV. The direction and filming is virtuoso all the way, and all the players are outstanding, especially John Simm as Raskolnikov, Ian McDiarmid absolutely super as the police inspector, Nigel Terry as Svidrigailov and David Haig as the perfectly abominable Luzhin, but they are all good, Rasumichin, Dunia and the mother as well - all deserve ample praise. There is really not much more to say. It's more organic than any other screening of this one of the best novels ever written that I have seen, but I still have a few to go through, and it will be very interesting to compare it with the modernization of the same year and especially the Russian in black-and-white from 1970. It relies a great deal on Josef von Sternberg's interesting version of 1935 with Peter Lorre and also in some respects on the German expressionistic of the 20s. There was a Swedish film in 1945 by Hampe Faustmann with the director himself playing Raskolnikov, which was too Swedish to be convincing (in a rather Bergman style), but this version succeeds in getting under the very skin of Dostoievsky even in spite of being very English - it actually comes close to Brontëism, and this is the marvel of the film. I prophesy it will grow into a classic.
