Karry
Best movie of this year hands down!
Hellen
I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
UnowPriceless
hyped garbage
Deanna
There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.
SnoopyStyle
It's 1870 Ryevsk, Tsarist Russia. Fyodor Karamazov (Lee J. Cobb) is a wealthy tyrannical father to four grown sons and has the mistress Grushenka (Maria Schell). The oldest Dmitri (Yul Brynner) is an officer who always fights with his father over 25k rubles left by his mother and engaged to the rich Katya (Claire Bloom) who wants to repay Dmitri for bailing out her father. Ivan (Richard Basehart) is an atheist rationalist and cool towards his family. Katya and Ivan develop feelings for each other. Alexey (William Shatner) is the saintly novice monk. Pavel Smerdyakov (Albert Salmi) is rumored to be the illegitimate son who was brought up by servants and works for Fyodor. Fyodor with Grushenka's help aims to put Dmitri in debtor's prison. Dmitri had to write IOUs to his father which he sells to Grushenka at half price.The acting style is big. Cobb does impressive drunk bombastic acting. Brynner needs a bit more emotions. He's too upright and always with that superior mannerism. The dialog is somewhat stiff. Marilyn as Grushenka would have been very interesting. Maria Schell is perfectly fine. The material feels rather like the highlights of a large Russian book. It's probably best to have read the book first. It's an impressive attempt.
kennethpitchford
This is not a review. See other comments of those who liked this film. For me, it is one of the two worst films of literary masterpieces I have ever seen, the other being The Sound and the Fury. The actors were all fine. The father is wrongly characterized but well played by Cobb. Brynner is excellent as Dmitri. They are less ambiguous and so more easily screened. There is no way that anyone could capture Ivan, though Basehart does his best. And Alexei? It's not Shatner's fault that this role is written so terribly. As you can see, I absolve the actors of the crime committed by the film. Perhaps it is not Maria Schell's fault, either, that she mugs and grins her way through her ridiculous part. But I kept wishing she would stop smiling, just once stop smiling whatever emotion she thinks she is conveying. I felt this intensely both when I saw the film in 1958 and 2010. If anything Schell is worse than Joanne Woodward in the Faulkner film when the latter says, "And this fine old house just falling to wrack and ruin about our ears" Nothing in the film Karamazov, of course, about how the "miraculously preserved" corpse of Zosima starts stinking in short order. And predictably, of course, not a hint of the Grand Inquisitor. The worst omission by far, however, is the boys shouting "Hurrah for Karamazov" at the end of the book. Critics once voted that line the greatest single line in all of literature, second only to "Look up Nicholas, look up!" in George Eliot's Middlemarch. It's not that I expect a film to capture anything but glimpses of a great work, but this film is a travesty. Marilyn Monore would have been a big plus, as she was in The Misfits. The first time I saw this film, I hadn't even read the book, which I've since read many times and tend to think is one of the world's greatest novels. Well, what can one expect from 1950s middlebrow Hollywood? It's like penciling a mustache on the Mona Lisa to make it more accessible. No thanks.
Samuel
It's impossible to make a film based on such a book as the "Brothers Karamzov" by F.M. Dostojevsky.Richard Brooks is a great director, but that film is on a very low level.The worst part of the film was the ending. Well, let's think of the book. In the end we have the "guilty" Dimitrij Karamazov. Afterwards they sent him to Siberia. In the end, the famous epilogues of Dostojevsky, the friends and family making a plan to save him. But that's it ... a nd now the film takes two steps more and shows us an illusion ending of the escape of Dimitry and Gruschenka(I think). just from the moral point I'm sure that Dostojevsky would finish the book with an open end because one the one hand he is not guilty(Smerdjakov is the real murderer) and so he have to be a free man. But on the other hand he goes to his father to kill him, so he has decided to commit the crime... that's a moral dilemma and so the following point is an open end...well, for real ,it's just not full open.William Shatner as Aljoscha Karamazov... I'm sorry! --> NO!!!The others characters playing in a good performance as we have to expect it from such great actors ... In front of course a superb performance of Yul Breynner as Dimitrij. I think that there are not many actors who can play this part in a better way.But as I said in the beginning: This book is unadaptable. It never should be film in two hours that's impossible. I think that there are some 'longer films, so maybe they could do the right thing... But I just keep the opinion that this book can't be adapted.So - 3 points:A point for the great director Richard Brooks A point for a superb performance of Yul BrynnerFinally: A point for one of the greatest writers of all time: Dostojevsky
graham clarke
The optimum method for bringing a major literary work to the screen is the mini series, (though the television adaptation of Dostoyevski's "Crime and Punishment" was not to my liking.) There's no possible way a novel of the length and complexity such as "Brothers Karamazov" can be done justice to by the cinema, even given 145 minutes.This 1959 Hollywood version deserves full marks for summarizing and depicting the plot faithfully, but since so much of the essence of the book is missing one cannot help feeling the pointlessness of the entire exercise.Director Richard Brooks manages to sustain the emotion intensity of the piece, keeping the proceedings on an intimate scale, (David Lean no doubt would have blown it up to epic proportions). The cast are largely satisfactory with Yul Brynner is at his charismatic best as Dmitri and Claire Bloom is spot on as Katya. Iridescent Maria Schell is far too genteel for the earthy Grushenka, a part Marilyn Monroe somewhat misguidedly felt she was born to play, according to Hollywood lore. Lee J. Cobb tends towards hamming it up and an almost unrecognizably young William Shatner is a pleasant surprise as the mystically inclined Alexi.While there is some enjoyment to be gained from this movie, one can only wholeheartedly offer the recommendation – read the book.