As a big Dostoyevsky fan, I had always been disappointed with Hollywood's halfhearted attempts to get into the Russian romantic aesthetic -- case in point, Yul Brynner as Dmitri Karamazov. I had thought the whole problem was a poor casting decisions, but then I saw Yul as Major Surov and changed my mind. When given an intelligent script to work with, he suddenly came alive and was as noble, sexy, and conflicted as you could ever want a Neurotic Russian Officer to be! So he was a better Dmitri as Major Surov than he was as Dmitri. But that's because writer Tabori actually gave Yul, as the Conflicted Russian Officer, the kind of Conflicted Russian Officer lines that are worthy of real literature, and that have real meaning and pathos in them. For example, a propos of folk music, he says musingly, "You hear a man crying in the dark. And if you listen carefully enough, you know what he cries for. You look surprised, Lady Ashmore. Despite what you may have heard, tractors and Marxism aren't the only things the Russian cares for. There is always time for music."Brilliant!!
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