Review of The Brothers Karamazov

A vulgar and unprincipled man, Fyodor Karamazov has three very different sons: Alexey is a man of faith, Ivan is a materialistic and atheistic intellectual, Dimitri is a soldier in whom vice and virtue fight a great battle. The tensions are strong between the father and each of his sons. Hollywood ruined a lot of great books through the years, but had some successes as well, including this strong adaptation, with a good cast, good music, good costumes and good sets that create the atmosphere of a small muddy 19th Century Russian town. It befitted, though, a Russian director (Fyodor Otsep) to adapt that masterpiece of literature to the cinema, in 1931 (Der Moerder Dmitri Karamazov). Surprisingly, MGM produced a rather solid version. Like with Crime and Punishment, much of the book could easily be excised. There are parts of the book that work well towards advancing a plot , while other parts could just be immediately ditched. An excellent movie derived from Dostoevsky? Yes. Le Notti Bianche, Une femme douce, Les possédés, among others were quite good. Richard Brooks' film works mainly because the cast was well suited for the roles. But he inexplicably gave the novel a happy ending, with Ilyusha practically rising from his deathbed and Dmitri & Grushenka escaping into the future. Yet his adaptation was partially successful. It is faithful. It does try to overcome the melodramatic family conflict level in order to restore the entire metaphysical dimension of the novel. We can feel the hesitations, the tugging of the consciousness of the characters. The questions about the existence of God and the foundation of morality are, however, only sketched out. The reconstruction is well done and we notice a masterful work on the color. The film has not been successful and is generally too severely judged today. A pity. After all Mr. Brooks succeeded even realizing that his personal usual universe as an American director couldn't be farther removed from the "Russian soul".