Katusha, a country girl, is seduced and abandoned by Prince Nekludov. Nekludov finds himself, years later, on a jury trying the same Katusha for a crime he now realizes his actions drove her to. He follows her to imprisonment in Siberia, intent on redeeming her and himself as well.
Acting
Syomina's transformation from innocence to hardened prisoner.
Cinematography
Bleak Siberian landscapes that judge the characters.
Writing
Tolstoy's moral thorniness, unsoftened by adaptation.
Director
Mikhail Shveitser
Tamara Syomina
Katyusha Maslova
Yevgeny Matveyev
Prince Nekhludov
Pavel Massalsky
Presiding Judge
Aleksandr Khvylia
Merchant
Aleksei Smirnov
Nikiforov
Viktor Kulakov
Member of the Court
Lev Zolotukhin
Prosecutor
Vladimir Boriskin
Kartinkin
Nikolai Svobodin
Retired Colonel
Ivan Zhevago
Jailer
Aleksandra Panova
Agrafena Petrovna
Raisa Maksimova
Maya Bulgakova
Vladimir Makhov
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Soviet censors fought Shveitser over the film's religious elements — Tolstoy's Christian anarchism was politically awkward.
This 1960 adaptation arrived during Khrushchev's Thaw, when Soviet cinema could finally wrestle with moral complexity instead of socialist heroism.
SU
