Crime and Punishment U.S.A. Crime and Punishment U.S.A. Crime and Punishment U.S.A. (1959) is an American feature film, directed by Denis Sanders, and is— as the "New York Times" put it, “a beat generation version”—of the novel "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The film was released on November 1, 1959, is 96 minutes in length, and shot in black-and-white. In addition to making some changes in the plot and characterizations, it sets the tale, not in 19th-century Russia, but in mid-20th-century Los Angeles. The script was written by Walter Newman, and stars George Hamilton, in his first screen role, as “Robert Cole,” the
Crime and Punishment (1935 American film) and elaborate description of [his characters] mental attitudes." Harry Cohn's approved the project in part because Crime and Punishment, first published in 1866, was in the public domain and would require no copyright fees. Crime and Punishment exemplifies a trend in Hollywood of the 1930s towards elevating feature film credentials through adapting classical literature "to lend an air of prestige" to the film industry. The "odd cast", bestowed upon Sternberg, included a mix of Columbia contract artists as well as "supers"—freelance players engaged without a contract, for a modest fee—that satisfied Columbia's budgetary constraints. Production code officials had reviewed a