Originally produced in Russia, this compact video offers a well-researched, study of the author's life that will be of interest to even the most knowledgeable Dostoevski enthusiast. Using a collage of both black-and-white historical photographs and modern color video images, it shows the places where the author lived and worked, and the people with whom he associated.
Dostoevsky is famous for having situated the action of his novels in actual locations; even today one sees tourists retracing the steps of Raskolnikov through the back streets and alleys of St. Petersburg. To a limited extent, this video also does the same, providing the viewer with a sense of the brooding beauty of the poorer sections of that wonderful city.
From the cover:
An illuminating biography filmed where the author lived and worked.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881), one of the greatest novelists of all time, penetrated the human mind and heart with exceptional insight. His fiction has had a profound and enduring influence on the modern intellectual climate.
Dostoevsky was born in Moscow on Nov. 11, 1821. He had a gloomy childhood and at the age of 17 was sent to the military academy in St. Petersburg. Technical studies were of little interest to him, so upon graduation he decided to become a writer. His first novel, "Poor Folk" (1849) was highly praised for its sympathetic treatment of the downtrodden.
In 1849 he joined a group of intellectuals who read and debated French socialist theories forbidden to be openly discussed in czarist Russia. The entire group was imprisoned and taken to a place of execution; but at the last moment they were reprieved and the punishment was changed to penal exile. Nine years later he received permission to return to St. Petersburg where he resumed his literary career and wrote "The Insulted and Injured" (1861) and "Notes from the Underground" (1864).
The following years, spent abroad to escape creditors, were marked with great productivity: the completion of the novels "Crime and Punishment" (1866), "The Idiot" (1869), and "The Possessed" (1872). When Dostoevsky returned to Russia in 1873 he was world-renowned.. His last novel, "The Brothers Karamazov" (1880), was completed not long before his death in St. Petersburg on Feb. 9, 1881.