Richard Brooks was a talented and versatile director, well-versed especially in adapting literary works, concerning this I loved his movies based on Tennessee Williams' works and the movie adaptation of Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" but this time he totally missed the point about the story.
This adaptation is almost exclusively focused on the adventurous and romantic side of the novel missing out more important aspects as the characters psychology (which is rough-sketch), the critical analysis of religion and the existence of God, the reflection about the human condition, moreover it's absolutely unbalanced in terms of characters treatment, Dmitri seems to be the absolute protagonist around which revolves the story so Ivan and Alexi are reduced to supporting characters with no substance and, interestingly enough, it's just Ivan Karamazov the most important and complex character of the book (the author himself speaks through him), although The Brothers Karamazov was conceived by Dostoyevsky as a biography of Alexi Karamazov so if there's a protagonist that's just Alexi Karamazov, however the novel is choral enough it can't identify an absolute protagonist.
There's two memorable moments in the book which don't find a place in the movie, both of them involve Ivan, I'm talking of the "The Grand Inquisitor" poem and the encounter with the devil towards the end, I consider them two key passages without which The Brothers Karamazov wouldn't be so great. On the other hand I can understand why they didn't include that kind of passages in the movie, due to their verbosity I think, however The Brothers Karamazov is a verbose novel, it's an inescapable aspect which makes this novel sublime, The Brothers Karamazov is mainly a philosophical and psychological work, let it be clear, it'a a lot of things, it's a crime story, it's a love story, it's a legal thriller, but all that is absolutely marginal compared to the depth and the authenticity of the characters, it's an amazing study of human nature, well this authenticity and this depth were totally lost in the movie; the characters turn out to be stereotyped and melodramatic, except the father played by Lee J. Cobb that I liked.
Richard Basehart, who played Ivan, was definitely too old for the role, Ivan is 24 years old whereas Basehart was 44 when the movie was filmed, he looked clearly older than Yul Brynner who was supposed to be the elder brother, even if the actual age of the actors is not so important it's necessary to keep a consistency with the original characters in my opinion. Yul Brynner was decent enough as Dmitri, Dmitri himself is the character more faithful to the original, however I found Brynner good in the action sequences but a little expressionless in dramatic ones. What to say about William "J. T. Kirk" Shatner? I don't consider his performance so bad, I think his role was just poorly written, this Alexi Karamazov is just without personality.
In short I consider this adaptation a sort of "The Brothers Karamazov" for dummies, in the sense that it was totally deprived of its "cerebral" content, what remains of this monumental masterpiece is the umpteenth Hollywood's melodrama with the classic "and lived happily ever after" ending (which was totally overturned compared to the book's) in Douglas Sirk style.
If I should indicate a director who would have been able to do a great job with this story at that time I'd say Ingmar Bergman and I'd have liked to see Marlon Brando in the role of Ivan Karamazov, only two geniuses like those ones would have been able to do justice to this story, but now they're passed away as well as the time when it was still possible to make this kind of movies.
This adaptation is almost exclusively focused on the adventurous and romantic side of the novel missing out more important aspects as the characters psychology (which is rough-sketch), the critical analysis of religion and the existence of God, the reflection about the human condition, moreover it's absolutely unbalanced in terms of characters treatment, Dmitri seems to be the absolute protagonist around which revolves the story so Ivan and Alexi are reduced to supporting characters with no substance and, interestingly enough, it's just Ivan Karamazov the most important and complex character of the book (the author himself speaks through him), although The Brothers Karamazov was conceived by Dostoyevsky as a biography of Alexi Karamazov so if there's a protagonist that's just Alexi Karamazov, however the novel is choral enough it can't identify an absolute protagonist.
There's two memorable moments in the book which don't find a place in the movie, both of them involve Ivan, I'm talking of the "The Grand Inquisitor" poem and the encounter with the devil towards the end, I consider them two key passages without which The Brothers Karamazov wouldn't be so great. On the other hand I can understand why they didn't include that kind of passages in the movie, due to their verbosity I think, however The Brothers Karamazov is a verbose novel, it's an inescapable aspect which makes this novel sublime, The Brothers Karamazov is mainly a philosophical and psychological work, let it be clear, it'a a lot of things, it's a crime story, it's a love story, it's a legal thriller, but all that is absolutely marginal compared to the depth and the authenticity of the characters, it's an amazing study of human nature, well this authenticity and this depth were totally lost in the movie; the characters turn out to be stereotyped and melodramatic, except the father played by Lee J. Cobb that I liked.
Richard Basehart, who played Ivan, was definitely too old for the role, Ivan is 24 years old whereas Basehart was 44 when the movie was filmed, he looked clearly older than Yul Brynner who was supposed to be the elder brother, even if the actual age of the actors is not so important it's necessary to keep a consistency with the original characters in my opinion. Yul Brynner was decent enough as Dmitri, Dmitri himself is the character more faithful to the original, however I found Brynner good in the action sequences but a little expressionless in dramatic ones. What to say about William "J. T. Kirk" Shatner? I don't consider his performance so bad, I think his role was just poorly written, this Alexi Karamazov is just without personality.
In short I consider this adaptation a sort of "The Brothers Karamazov" for dummies, in the sense that it was totally deprived of its "cerebral" content, what remains of this monumental masterpiece is the umpteenth Hollywood's melodrama with the classic "and lived happily ever after" ending (which was totally overturned compared to the book's) in Douglas Sirk style.
If I should indicate a director who would have been able to do a great job with this story at that time I'd say Ingmar Bergman and I'd have liked to see Marlon Brando in the role of Ivan Karamazov, only two geniuses like those ones would have been able to do justice to this story, but now they're passed away as well as the time when it was still possible to make this kind of movies.