Director Richard Brooks did an impressive job of compression in adapting Dostoyevsky's classic story of tortured relationships in pre-revolutionary Russia and his casting was certainly fascinating, if not always entirely successful. Yul Brynner is a little too facile as the hedonistic Dmitri, and Lee J Cobb, playing the dominating father, roars at his role like an enraged bull. Maria Schell, however, in her Hollywood film debut, is excellent as the father's mistress, as are Albert Salmi as the epileptic Smerdyakov and Richard Basehart as the scholarly Ivan. William Shatner made his screen debut.

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