Information about the author:
Nikolay N. Podosokorsky
Nikolay N. Podosokorsky, PhD in Philology, Senior Researcher, Research Centre “Dostoevsky and World Culture,” A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya St., 25 A, bld. 1, 121069 Moscow, Russia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6310-1579
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Abstract:
The article, for the first time, examines the image of Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, in cinematic adaptations of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. As the subject of research, the author chose four film adaptations in which the Napoleonic myth is presented most vividly, unusually and, at the same time, representatively. These films are Crime and Punishment (1935) by Austrian-born American director Josef von Sternberg, Crime and Punishment (1956) by French director of Russian origin Georges Lampin, Crime and Punishment (1998) by American director Joseph Sargent, and the most recent TV series Crime and Punishment (2024) by Russian director Vladimir Mirzoev. They reinterpret Dostoevsky’s original plot and the role of the Napoleonic myth within it in different ways; however, they all convey the enormous importance that the image of Napoleon holds in the fate of Rodion Raskolnikov, who, in his own words, commits his crime in order to become the new “Napoleon.” While in the films by Sternberg and Lampen the pictorial emphasis is placed on symbolic objects/details (a portrait, a statuette), in Sargent’s film—and especially in Mirzoev’s TV series—the emphasis is placed on a significant change in the historical and literary context.
Keywords: Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, film adaptations, Napoleon, Napoleonic myth, Rodion Raskolnikov, Josef von Sternberg, Georges Lampin, Joseph Sargent, Vladimir Mirzoev.
