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There have been several film versions of Feodor Dostoyevsky's tale of an obsessed elite and a Prince with a destructive passion for one woman. This interpretation by director Ivan Pyriev features Yuri Yakovlev as Prince Myshkin and Y. Borissova as his love, Nastassia. The tale opens with the impoverished, epileptic Prince returning to St. Petersburg in 1860, after a stay in a Swiss mental hospital. He restricts his activities and interests to the social circle of the aristocracy and his family, and their multitude of petty problems. When he falls in love with Nastassia, she returns his feelings but is also pursued by Rogogine (L. Parkhomenko), a classic villain. Given the Prince's mental weaknesses and his inexplicable, self-destructive love for Nastassia, his prognosis does not look good.