The Idiot

Prince Myshkin returns to Russia after treatment in Switzerland. On the train to Petersburg he meets Rogozhin, who tells him about his passion for Nastasya Filippovna. Once in the city the prince ends up in the house of a distant relative, the Yepanchin family, and a portrait he happens to see on a table there will not let go of him. The woman in the portrait is Nastasya. Ivan Pyryev filmed only the first part of Dostoevsky's novel. A continuation was prepared but never made, so the story breaks off in the middle, at its highest point. Yuri Yakovlev plays Myshkin and Yuliya Borisova plays Nastasya. The sets, the costumes and the playing all sit close to theatre; readers of the novel will find it incomplete, but it remains one of the most discussed of the Soviet adaptations.