Die Brüder Karamasov

It's 1870 Ryevsk, Tsarist Russia. Fyodor Karamazov (Lee J. Cobb) is a wealthy tyrannical father to four grown sons and has the mistress Grushenka (Maria Schell). The oldest Dmitri (Yul Brynner) is an officer who always fights with his father over 25k rubles left by his mother and engaged to the rich Katya (Claire Bloom) who wants to repay Dmitri for bailing out her father. Ivan (Richard Basehart) is an atheist rationalist and cool towards his family. Katya and Ivan develop feelings for each other. Alexey (William Shatner) is the saintly novice monk. Pavel Smerdyakov (Albert Salmi) is rumored to be the illegitimate son who was brought up by servants and works for Fyodor. Fyodor with Grushenka's help aims to put Dmitri in debtor's prison. Dmitri had to write IOUs to his father which he sells to Grushenka at half price.

The acting style is big. Cobb does impressive drunk bombastic acting. Brynner needs a bit more emotions. He's too upright and always with that superior mannerism. The dialog is somewhat stiff. Marilyn as Grushenka would have been very interesting. Maria Schell is perfectly fine. The material feels rather like the highlights of a large Russian book. It's probably best to have read the book first. It's an impressive attempt.

If you have not seen this-Please do. It has action,deceit,depravity,murder and all the things you might expect. The cast does a great job and after not having seen it for 44 years, it is STILL a great film.My wife asked me to order the film 10 days ago. I did. We both watched it today.Simply a great movie. Period. Enjoy.

The Brothers Karamazov has quickly become one of my favourite books, with its riveting story, interesting and thought-provoking themes and some of the most brilliant characterisation of any book (how many pieces of literature have characters this multi-dimensional?) I've ever read. This 1958 film version does pale in comparison, lacking the book's depth of characterisation, but does a brave job adapting a monumental and complex book with some scenes being impossible to film, and is a solid film overall.

It's not perfect. Sometimes the film is stodgily paced (some might say overlong, not to me, considering the length of the book and the amount of story there is if anything the film's too short). The ending was always going to be a reasonably problematic one, with it in the book being as open-ended as it is, but this viewer couldn't help shake off the feeling that the ending felt too rushed and incomplete here. Most of the casting came off surprisingly well, but there were reservations about Maria Schell, despite her alluring appearance and her impressively played early scenes she was generally too genteel for Grushenka, a role that was in need of more earthiness and peasant-like.

However, The Brothers Karamazov looks great, with lavish colour photography and an evocative re-creation of the opulent but also gritty 19th-century Russia period. It's scored with a stirring yet also understated richness by Bronislau Kaper, and does benefit from controlled direction by Richard Brooks and a literate script that really provokes though and, even when condensed with the essence and the religious and philosophical themes missing, makes an effort to keep to Dostoevsky's tone of writing and giving the film substance. It is not an easy job adapting a nearly 800 page book into a two-and-a-half hour film, and while not completely successful due, to feeling sometimes like highlights being present but not always to their full potential and major characters being significantly reduced (Alexei, Zosima) at the expense at focusing primarily on Dmitri, it does so laudably. It is still mostly riveting and there wasn't much trouble following the story, with the major events depicted and structured relatively faithfully, and there is enough atmosphere, suspense, emotion and mystery to give the story some flavour.

From the acting front, the film comes off surprisingly successfully considering that initially there were a couple of actors that seemed unlikely casting (i.e. William Shatner). The two that came off the most strongly were Yul Brynner and Lee J. Cobb. Brynner is very charismatic and gives the right emotional intensity and vulnerability, while Cobb gives his patriarchal role so much juice and life, his demeanour sometimes even quite intimidating (the role is a problematic one due to being one that could easily fall into overacted caricature, Cobb admittedly does overact but enjoyably and the character still felt real. Richard Basehart brings many layers and nuances to Ivan, Claire Bloom is spot-on as Katya and Albert Salmi is effectively insidious as Smerdyakov. William Shatner does suffer from a greatly reduced (in terms of how he's written) character, but surprisingly this is Shatner at his most subdued and moving, most of the time in his acting for personal tastes he's the opposite.

All in all, pales in comparison to the masterpiece that is the book but it is a brave attempt. Taking it on its own merits, which is a fairer way to judge, The Brothers Karamazov has short-comings but is a solid film overall. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Novels and movies are separate disciplines and each has its own requirements. People who want to read Dostoevsky and people who want to know what one of his books is about also have separate needs. I am a Dostoevsky lover, and have read THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV in several translations (no, I don't know Russian). This film hits all the necessary high notes to cover the book's plot, and so the screenplay serves the film well. The brothers themselves (Yul Brynner, Richard Basehart, Albert Salmi and William Shatner) turn in variable performances. Basehart comes in first place, with Brynner smoldering not far behind. A young William Shatner shows promise, while Salmi's inexplicable whine is almost unbearable, which is a shame because Salmi was a good, though underused, actor. Stealing the show from the brothers in every scene he's in is the wonderful Lee J. Cobb. Fans of the book will be disappointed at the excisions, but they were necessary to pare the story down to a workable movie. And, though I love the book and think it may be the world's great novel, I prefer the ending of the movie! Dostoevsky's book is open-ended as he intended it to be an introduction to characters he intended to use in further book -- but he died before it was written. So the movie wraps everything up nicely. Ivan's end scene is much preferable (no spoilers, though! See the movie and read the book!). Although Alexei is the main character in the book, he's basically an observer. Dmitri (perfectly captured by Brynner) is the powerhouse of the book and should be the focus in a dramatic adaptation, as he is here. A worthy effort in making an unfilmable novel filmable. If you want to know what the book is about but a thick novel is daunting, this film tells you everything you need to know.

The optimum method for bringing a major literary work to the screen is the mini series, (though the television adaptation of Dostoyevski's "Crime and Punishment" was not to my liking.) There's no possible way a novel of the length and complexity such as "Brothers Karamazov" can be done justice to by the cinema, even given 145 minutes.

This 1959 Hollywood version deserves full marks for summarizing and depicting the plot faithfully, but since so much of the essence of the book is missing one cannot help feeling the pointlessness of the entire exercise.

Director Richard Brooks manages to sustain the emotion intensity of the piece, keeping the proceedings on an intimate scale, (David Lean no doubt would have blown it up to epic proportions). The cast are largely satisfactory with Yul Brynner is at his charismatic best as Dmitri and Claire Bloom is spot on as Katya. Iridescent Maria Schell is far too genteel for the earthy Grushenka, a part Marilyn Monroe somewhat misguidedly felt she was born to play, according to Hollywood lore. Lee J. Cobb tends towards hamming it up and an almost unrecognizably young William Shatner is a pleasant surprise as the mystically inclined Alexi.

While there is some enjoyment to be gained from this movie, one can only wholeheartedly offer the recommendation – read the book.