Set in tsarist Russia around the turn of the century and based on a true story of a Russian Jewish peasant Yakov Bog who was wrongly imprisoned for a most unlikely crime - the “ritual murder” of a Gentile child in Kyiv. We witness the unrelenting detail of the peasant handyman's life in prison and see him gain in dignity as the efforts to humiliate him and make him confess fail.
Acting
Alan Bates' eyes carry entire acts of silent resistance.
Direction
Frankenheimer traps you in cell walls that seem to shrink.
Director
John Frankenheimer
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The 1913 Beilis trial this adapts helped spark global Zionist organizing; Frankenheimer filmed during the Six-Day War, lending weird present-tense urgency.
Bates spent weeks in a reproduction cell to prepare; cinematographer Marcello Gatti used only natural light sources, making night scenes genuinely punishing to shoot.
GB
