The first sound version of Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov was this film made in Germany by Soviet director Fedor Ozep. Based on “themes borrowed from the novel,” it features Fritz Kortner and Anna Sten in the story of Dimitri's competition with Old Karamazov over the prostitute Gruschenka. Kortner and Sten both give splendid performances, and the film is visually stunning. Although it was directed by a Russian, with the final editing said to have been done by Pudovkin, German film historian Seigfried Kracauer (From Caligari to Hitler) locates the film in the German silent tradition (“inanimate objects assert themselves imperiously whenever human passions boil over”), though he does point to elements of Russian montage (“the magnificent troika episode”). Kracauer also notes that “Ozep combines sounds and pictures in a truly cinematic way.” The script was co-written by Victor Trivas, another Russian emigré whose German and French films will be shown October 20. Fedor Ozep, who also directed The Living Corpse, emigrated to France and then to the U.S.