Along with canonical adaptations, this program includes little-known films. For example, "The Idiot" by Pyotr Chardynin is one of the first attempts to transfer Dostoevsky’s novel to the screen. The film is not particularly ingenious, but at the same time it reproduces all the main events of the novel. Another example is Akira Kurosawa’s “The Idiot”, in which it is not so much the events that are important as the reproduction of Dostoevsky’s worldview. Another “pair” of films is “Crime and Punishment” by Pierre Chenal and “The Puritan” by Jeff Musso. In the first case, the story is conveyed quite accurately and is tied to the Petersburg interiors of Dostoevsky’s time. In the second one, the hero of the film, the action of which is moved to France, is a neurotic religious fanatic who killed a prostitute in the name of freeing the world from evil and debauchery. In Andrzej Żuławski’s film “Mad Love”, “The Idiot” is turned into a burlesque, and the plot goes far beyond the original’s content.
Sergey Ogudov