Crime and Punishment

“I am Sonya! You don't know who or what I am... the police know! They know I'm in love with a murderer! But a woman like me might still save a man's soul!”

Behind on the rent and out of options, the former student Roderick Raskolnikov (Peter Lorre) commits a murder. Inspector Porfiry (Edward Arnold) takes the case and begins to circle him, polite and patient, in no hurry to be right. Josef von Sternberg adapts Dostoevsky, and Raskolnikov must choose between keeping his guilt hidden and confessing, with his mother (Elisabeth Risdon) and Sonya (Marian Marsh) close enough to be hurt either way.