Sternberg and Paramount studios ended their eight-year affiliation with the completion of The Devil is a Woman, the director's seventh and final collaboration with actress Marlene Dietrich. Producer B. P. Schulberg, recently expelled from Paramount, joined Harry Cohn's Columbia Pictures and quickly brought Sternberg on board in a two-picture contract with the "poorly financed" studio. Dostoyevsky's psychological exploration of a homicidal sociopath, his remorse and redemption posed an immense challenge a cinematic rendering "as there could be no visual equivalent the author's detailed reasoning and elaborate description of mental attitudes." Harry Cohn's approved the project in part because Crime and Punishment, first published in 1866, was in the public domain and would require no copyright fees. Crime and Punishment exemplifies a trend in Hollywood of the 1930s towards elevating feature film credentials through adapting classical literature "to lend an air of prestige" to the film industry. The "odd cast", bestowed upon Sternberg, included a mix of Columbia contract artists as well as "supers"—freelance players engaged without a contract, for a modest fee—that satisfied Columbia's budgetary constraints. Production code officials had reviewed a recent stage adaption of the novel and warned that the narrative describes "a failure of the police to arrest and prosecute the young college student " and that "serious thematic difficulties will be encountered because of the characterization of the heroine as a prostitute. This characterization is a definite part of the plot." Sternberg, recognizing the complexities inherent to the novel, prudently chose to compose a straightforward genre film "about a detective and a criminal." Screenplay was by S. K. Lauren and Joseph Anthony. Cinematography by Lucien Ballard. Music by Louis "Lou" Silvers. Sets by Stephen Goosens. Costumes by Murray Mayer. Edited by Richard Calhoun.
Critical reception
Writing for The Spectator in 1936, Graham Greene gave the film a poor review, noting that despite the fine acting of Peter Lorre, this version of Crime and Punishment was entirely too vulgar. Greene commented that the original Russian story of "religious and unhappy mind" had been altered in this picture into a "lunch-bar-chromium version" with idealism, ethics, and optimism "of a salesman who has never failed to sell his canned beans". He recommended Crime et Châtiment as a much better version of the story,
