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Abstract:

The paper analyzes the only preserved foreign silent screen version and twelve foreign sound film versions and adaptations of Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment, produced in Europe, Asia, the Americas, and Australia from 1923 to 2016—and defined as “faithful,” “based on,” “associated with,” “with reference to,” etc. Specific subjects of the analysis are the basic attitudes of cinema makers towards literary sources (originals) and the artistic potentials of the common motto of film directors: “This is how I see it,” as applied to the process of translating a book into a film. The contents and quality of various screen versions of Crime and Punishment are explored here from the point of view of the transformations of the chronotope. To what time and place is the plot of the novel transferred, when it does not remain in its original setting? What happens to the plot, the characters, and the meaning of the novel if the events are transferred to another cultural milieu and/or to another historical period? How is the novel’s epilogue—the perspective of Raskolnikov’s renewal and rebirth in the time after the novel—interpreted? An analysis of the screen versions shows that the fate of Raskolnikov remains a painful moment for cinema worldwide: the central character of the novel has been too deeply connected with the last century; he rhymes too much with its tragic fate.

Keywords: Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, foreign cinema, chronotope transformations, overview of cinematic adaptations, directors’ interpretation, epilogue, post- novel fate of the character.