Crime and Punishment

Raskolnikov, a former student, cannot pay the rent, and that narrowness pushes him to murder. Once the police begin investigating he is caught between two things: hiding his guilt and the pressure to confess. The film brings that inner conflict further forward than the events themselves. It comes from the expressionist vein of German cinema of 1923; the sets and the shadows carry the man’s state outward. The means of silent cinema turn here into psychological tension. That the punishment for a crime works inside a person before it works in law stands at the centre. The company was made up of actors out of the Russian theatre. Gregori Chmara takes the lead in Robert Wiene’s hundred and forty two minute German film, completed in 1923.