Raskolnikow / Crime and Punishment (2023 restoration Filmmuseum München)

Robert Wiene: Raskolnikow / Crime and Punishment (DE 1923) with Grigori Chmara (Rodion Raskolnikov).

Delitto e castigo

    DE 1923.dir, scen: Robert Wiene, based on the novel by Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky, Prestuplenije i nakasanije, 1866. photog: Willy Goldberger. des: Andrej Andrejew. cast: Grigorij Chmara (Rodion Raskolnikow), Alla Tarassowa (Dunja), Michail Tarschanow (Semjon Marmeladow), Maria Germanowa (Katerina Marmeladowa), Maria Kryshanowskaja (Sonja), Pawel Pawlow (Porfiri Petrowitsch), Sergej Kommissarow (Luschin), Pjotr Scharow (Swidrigailow).

    prod: Lionardo-Film, for Neumann-Produktion GmbH. dist: Bayerische Filmgesellschaft. première: 15.8.1923 (Bio Hvězda, Prague), 26.9.1923 (Regina-Lichtspiele, München), 27.10.1923 (Mozartsaal, Berlin). 

    Banned in Finland (control number 12128) in 1923 by Suomen Biografiliitto.

    copia/copy: DCP, 142', col. (from 35 mm, tinted, orig. l. 3168 m, 21 fps); titles: GER. source: Filmmuseum München. Restoration © 2023.

    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone 2024: The Canon Revisited.

    Grand piano: Richard Siedhoff, a piano reduction of his orchestral score.

    Viewed with e-subtitles in English / Italian at Teatro Verdi, 11 Oct 2024.

Stafan Drössler (GCM 2024): "At the beginning of the 1920s, a rapidly growing community of exiled Russians settled in Berlin, opening stores and cafés in the city center and entering the city’s cultural life. When Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863–1938) and his Moscow Art Theater company presented Russian classics on stage at the Lessing Theater in September 1922, it was a society event and the theatre was sold out. On the last day of the guest performances, an announcement appeared in Film-Kurier (Nr. 215, 30.9.1922) that Lionardi-Film Gesellschaft was working on Raskolnikow, a film adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment, to be performed “exclusively by members of the Moscow Art Theater” under the direction of Robert Wiene. One day later, the Berliner Börsen-Courier (1.10.1922) reported that the project was “the first time that an attempt has been made to transfer a closed theatre ensemble, and one that is considered a prime example of ensemble art, as a whole to film”."

"Pjotr [Peter] Scharow, director and actor of the Künstlertheater (who played Swidrigailow in the film), explained in the same newspaper that the actors were “happy to have found in Robert Wiene a director who not only unites with us in his reverence for the poet, but whose art, according to his earlier creations, in its rejection of naturalism, carries the conditions for a production that goes beyond dry reality. We are pleased to be able to give him our artist A. W. Andrejew at his side, who gives everyone their room, everyone their corner.” Dostoyevsky’s novel was considered difficult to film. As Robert Wiene explained in Film-Kurier (Nr. 73, 25.3.1924): “This man Raskolnikow lives only in hypertrophic mental processes, in inner struggles to which the environment hardly corresponds. Nothing here is based on reality, and the visualization had to suggest this in an anti-naturalistic way.”"

"Filming took place in the fall of 1922. In February 1923, Raskolnikow was completed, submitted by Neumann-Produktion to the Film Review Board in Berlin, and was passed on 9 March 1923. However, the film was not immediately released in German cinemas, but was first offered for world sales. 1923 was the year of galloping inflation in Germany, a time for speculators and profiteers. Selling German films abroad for hard currency was a lucrative business. Hans Neumann had just founded his company Neumann-Produktion to produce his own first major project, I.N.R.I., for a worldwide 1923 Christmas release. He hired Robert Wiene to direct the film and Gregori Chmara to play Jesus. Apparently, Neumann had helped Lionardo-Film financially and taken over Raskolnikow. But while he launched an unprecedented advertising campaign to promote I.N.R.I., he did not pay much attention to Raskolnikow. The first verifiable public screening took place on15 August 1923 at the Bio Hvězda cinema in Prague. From 26 September, the film was shown in Munich at the Regina-Lichtspiele, before Neumann-Film sent out invitations for the official “premiere” of the film at the Mozartsaal in Berlin on 27 October."

"The German film critics consistently praised the performance of the cast: “We want to say it without envy: No German actor could have achieved what these Russians did with such naturalness, warm humanity and harrowing realism ... not acting, but: living!” (Reichsfilmblatt Nr. 44, 3.11.1923) Wiene’s cinematic concept, on the other hand, was controversial: “An artistic-aesthetic impossibility, however, is an expressionistically free decoration to the thoroughly impressionistic-naturalistic play, to the historically authentic costume...” (Süddeutsche Filmzeitung Nr. 40, 4.11.1923) Kurt Pinthus polemicized in Das Tage-Buch (Nr. 46, 17.11.1923): “One always asks oneself: How were these original Russians thrown into these jagged rooms, stairwells, streets that lose themselves in the infinite and mysterious?” But he admits: “The film is very exciting, it eats in your brain; you sense Dostoyevsky’s greatness and depth; you are shaken, taken away, purified. And that proves that there was more going on here than just the criminal case: a filmic experience beyond mere stretched psychology.” The film’s powerful impact is documented by an incident in Warsaw’s Apollo cinema: “At the moment when Raskolnikow reached for the axe for the second time to kill the witness to his murder of the pawnbroker, one of the spectators shot at the screen with a pistol in order – as he later explained – to prevent the second murder.” (Express Poranny, 25.10.1923)"

"Raskolnikow was shown in many countries in various edited and modified versions. In Bucharest, the film filled the 2,000 seats of the Ekoria Cinema for four weeks. In Kyoto, Raskolnikow was the opening film of the Shochikuza Cinema on 28 January 1925. In London, the film was in one of the first Film Society programs – the film ran without an intermission and silently without musical accompaniment, “an experience unique in a public cinema” preventing the film from being impaired by “anachronistic or hackneyed music”. (The Evening Standard, 15.12.1925) In the USA, the Motion Picture Guild distributed Raskolnikow in 1927 under the title Crime and Punishment, opening on 19 June 1927, with a one-week run at the Little Theater, a progressive arthouse in Washington, D.C. (which also played Potemkin and Caligari)."

"Today only foreign versions of the film have survived, all of which are incomplete and significantly shorter than the German censorship length of 3168 metres. In 1991 the Nederlands (now Eye) Filmmuseum created a reconstruction based on a Dutch nitrate print, supplemented with footage from a Russian copy from Gosfilmofond, into which parts of an Italian version from the Cineteca Italiana in Milan had already been incorporated. For the new reconstruction, in addition to the original nitrate print from Italy, a dupe negative of the American distribution version was used, which contained previously unknown scenes and, above all, better shots from the A negative, while the Dutch and Russian material came from a B negative and a C negative."

"Unfortunately, no detailed synopses, screenplay, original score, or censorship files are known to exist which could help to recreate of the original version of Raskolnikow. As contemporary critics emphasized that the film “faithfully followed in the footsteps of its poet, most of whose text had been used verbatim in the titles” (Lichtbild-Bühne Nr. 44, 3.11.1923), the 1912 German translation of the novel by Hermann Röhl had to serve as the basis for the reconstruction. The wording for the texts of the intertitles was also taken from this source, and their new graphic design is based on a font developed from the intertitles of Wiene’s Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari. Since the Italian fragment of Raskolnikow still had traces of the coloring, some of which differed from the color specifications found on the leaders of the American dupe negative, a new color scheme was developed, based on times of day and locations. Richard Siedhoff has composed an impressive new orchestral score, which very subtly emphasizes the moods of the main character; he will perform a piano reduction of his score at this year’s Giornate." –Stefan Drössler (GCM 2024)

AA: I saw in 1997 Raskolnikow in a Munich print of the 1991 Netherlands Film Museum restoration, 3031 m /18 fps/ 147 min, too long ago to compare.

But my general impression is that the new restoration is visually smoother, subtler and more gratifying. I love the subtle toning. The projection speed is now 21 fps, faster than before. In those days, silent films were routinely screened too slowly.

Dostoevsky in general and Crime and Punishment in particular are perfect for Expressionism, so perfect that visual excess should be unnecessary, but I was happily surprised to discover the shotgun wedding of the sophistication of Moscow Art Theatre and Robert Wiene's exaggerated nightmare cinema yielding such successful results. The overdone mise-en-scène conveys a world out of joint.

This is a valid Dostoevsky interpretation, faithful to the spirit, but there is not always an irresistible, compelling drive. The best adaptation is Crime and Punishment (1970) by Lev Kulidzhanov, with George Taratorkin as Raskolnikov and Innokenti Smoktunovsky as Porfiri, but it is distorted by the elimination of the spiritual transformation.

Dostoevsky is essential for the cinema and the matter is deeper than that of adaptations. Imperial Russian cinema of the 1910s, Weimar cinema of the 1920s, French cinema of the 1930s and American film noir of the 1940s all shared a profound Dostoevskyan undercurrent. Robert Wiene's Raskolnikow is fascinating from this perspective. It is great to have it back in this thrilling restoration.