Crime and Punishment (1970 film) Crime and Punishment (1970 film) Crime and Punishment () is a 1970 Soviet drama film in two parts directed by Lev Kulidzhanov, based on the eponymous novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-law student, kills an old pawnbroker and her sister, perhaps for money, perhaps to prove a theory about being above the law. He comes to police attention through normal procedures (he was the victim's client), but his outbursts make him the prime suspect of the clever Porfiry. Meanwhile, life swirls around Raskolnikov: his mother and sister come to the city followed by two older men seeking his
Crime and Punishment success. Although the remaining parts of the novel had still to be written, an anonymous reviewer wrote that "the novel promises to be one of the most important works of the author of "The House of the Dead"". In his memoirs, the conservative belletrist Nikolay Strakhov recalled that in Russia "Crime and Punishment" was the literary sensation of 1866. The novel soon attracted the criticism of the liberal and radical critics. G.Z. Yeliseyev sprang to the defense of the Russian student corporations, and wondered, "Has there ever been a case of a student committing murder for the sake of robbery?"