About the film
Prince Myshkin comes back to Russia after years in a Swiss clinic. He is kind, honest and trusting to the point that people call him an idiot. In St Petersburg he meets Nastasya Filippovna, a proud woman whom society treats as a fallen one, and the wild merchant Rogozhin who is obsessed with her.
Pyryev's colourful adaptation covers the first part of Dostoevsky's novel, ending with the famous scene in which Nastasya throws a fortune into the fire.
Yuri Yakovlev's Myshkin is one of the most moving performances in Russian film, and a perfect way into Dostoevsky.
Did you know?
- The film adapts only the first part of the novel; a planned second film was never made.
- Yuri Yakovlev, later the comic building manager in Ivan Vasilievich, became a star with this role.
- Ivan Pyryev later filmed Dostoevsky again, in The Brothers Karamazov (1968).
