Crime and Punishment

The film moves the novel by Dostoevsky to the Paris of the fifties. Rene Brunel, a poor student, is against the marriage of his sister Nicole to an antique dealer much older than she is, and he refuses the money that comes from that man. Unable to keep himself, he kills an old woman who lends money at interest. The inspector on the case does not press him but waits patiently, and the real pressure comes out of that waiting, leaving the young man between hiding what he did and confessing it. Georges Lampin films the streets nobody looks at, the crumbling buildings and the people who have been forgotten. Jean Gabin plays the inspector in the hundred and seven minute French film, with Marina Vlady and Robert Hossein also in the cast; it was completed in 1956.