Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

MusicChat It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

gratwicker This is a well written script based on Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment." I think it is essentially a remake of a French film, with Jean Gabin,called "Crime and Punishment," later changed to "The Most Dangerous Sin," made around the same time. At any rate, self- justification, remorse, rationalization, guilt, and Truth are the subjects at hand. Each is handled slowly, without emphasis; the viewer is expected to bring much to the picture. This explains the films lower ratings. Hamilton, as an actor, is weak, others have been reminded of Tony Perkins. He was too handsome, and wasn't smart enough to use make up or a cheap haircut to make himself appear to be the poor student of his role. But, the real star is Frank Silvera, who underplays the cagey Detective, and is a joy to watch in action. He toys with Hamilton, who, unfortunately, just isn't his match (as an actor.) Marian Seldes plays Hamilton's long suffering sister.

saintonge This is a very good adaptation of Dostoevsky's novel. The actors all gave solid performances, and the script captures the essence of an investigation into a crime that will depend on not on physical evidence, or finding a witness, but on a psychological campaign by the police detective, as he seeks to get a crack his suspect. As George Hamilton's Robert fences with Frank Silvera's Inspector Porter, he tries to come to terms with his own guilt and fear. In the end, it resolves wonderfully, with Robert coming to terms with his actions and deciding how to live them.The low budget for the film seems to have been a benefit in this case. The seedy Southern California landscapes give a feel of desperation that makes the initial crime believable, and makes Robert's desire to escape it understandable. And the 'cheapness' fits the small cast, and the film's concentration on a few characters, intensifying the psychological pressure Robert is feeling.Really well done, and I highly recommend it.

Scharnberg, Max I am not going to present a conventional rejection, nor to justify such a rejection from a conventional perspective. Apart from people who have a professional relation to such subjects, rather few persons are as familiar with different philosophical schools and different forms of fictional literature. But I do not think that Dostoyevsky is more than a middle-sized writer: far from poor but also far from good. Perhaps a little better than Walter Scott. And I am unable to perceive any philosophy in his writings. Nor have I learned much from texts aimed at explaining his philosophy. Consequently, it would be alien to my thinking to reproach Sanders's movie for having neglected 'the philosophy' of the novel. Nevertheless, I think that Denis Sanders has reduced 'Crime and Punishment' to a kind of 'Classics Illustrated'. A boy murders an old pawnbroker woman. This is the kind of events we may read about in the newspapers or watch on television, and the same thing is true of what follows: the boy eventually gets of a nervous breakdown because of his crime. He goes to the police and confesses, and even hands over hard evidence. - However much I think that Dostoyevsky is overrated, his novel contains SOMETHING more than just mass media sensations, but Sanders's movie does not (apart from one scene). The boy's writings about super-humans with the right to discard normal moral rules reminds me foremost of a newspaper columnist trying to catch the attention of bored readers by means of funny paradoxes. - - - But there is one scene that moved me very deeply; perhaps mostly so because of its very quiet nature. Sometimes (though not always) it is a wise rule that emotions should be felt by the spectators, not exhibited by the actors. There is nothing in the girl's appearance or behaviour that reveals her profession. But one night when she goes past a cheap café, she sees the boy in there, and goes to him. She tells him, 'I go out with men. Many men.' - This is a really great scene, and it must be regretted that I do not have the proper competence for describing why it is so. After some 40 years I still would like to see this scene again. I have no wish to see any other part of the movie again.

Robert J. Maxwell I haven't seen this movie for more years than I care to remember. It was released accompanied by sensationalistic contemporary tag lines -- "Beatniks! Rebels!" -- partly because George Hamilton is seen playing the bongos once in a while. Yet, it has stuck in my memory. It really was an unusual film. First of all, Dostoyevsky is rather awkwardly superimposed on a story involving residents of modern L.A. The novel doesn't quite fit on the setting. People have serious conversations about God and the afterlife. Okay for a 19th-cntury Rusian novel -- but sunny California? Home of the Fountain of the World Cult? And it always bothered me about the novel that everyone in Petersberg seems to be acquainted with everyone else. It was a bit difficult to swallow that proposition in the novel; it is absolutely impossible for that to have been true in L.A. circa 1960, the most anomic community on the face of the planet. But instead of being an irritation, the lack of fit between the plot and its contemporary setting lends the film an unquiet, almost surreal quality. Something is off kilter and we don't know exactly what. We squirm with bemusement.Two points ought to be made. The movie must have been shot on the cheap. In this case, it inadvertently helps. We are given a tour of the seedier sections of L.A. -- railroad tracks, refuse dumps, shabby housing -- that a better-funded film would probably have avoided. Instead of Echo Park we get a slum. This is commonplace now, but it wasn't at the time. It's too bad nobody in California seems to know what a genuine slum looks like. Here it's all a sun-drenched, palm-fronded, flower-strewn paradise, however desecrated. They should have set it in Newark. And they needn't have used high-key lighting so consistently. It looks like an early television sitcom.Second, the acting is actually quite good. I am even willing to forgive George Hamilton's handsomeness. (He's always been willing to poke fun at himself anyway.) Mary Murphy is not the young naif she played in "The Wild One." She's not exactly a hooker either, as she was in the novel. In 1960 neither audiences nor agents of social control were prepared for that. But she is a serious kind of easy lay, which was still saying a lot. Best of all is Frank Silvera. The smooth admirable way in which he insinuates himself into Robert's life. The cat and mouse repartee. The wondering expression on his face, his amazement that Hamilton has not yet caught on, as he tells him who committed the murder -- "Why YOU did, Robert." I don't know how I would respond to the movie now, lo, these many years later. But, crude as it is, it's not just a shoddy ripoff of a famous psychological drama. It would be a mistake to think so. If all the elements of the film are amateurish, as in a high school play, the people involved seem to be hitting the right notes by accident. This is worth catching, a real curiosity.