Ryevsk, Russia, 1870. Tensions abound in the Karamazov family. Fyodor is a wealthy libertine who holds his purse strings tightly. His four grown sons include Dmitri, the eldest, an elegant officer, always broke and at odds with his father, betrothed to Katya, herself lovely and rich. The other brothers include a sterile aesthete, a factotum who is a bastard, and a monk. Family tensions erupt when Dmitri falls in love with one of his father's mistresses, the coquette Grushenka. Two brothers see Dmitri's jealousy of their father as an opportunity to inherit sooner. Acts of violence lead to the story's conclusion: trials of honor, conscience, forgiveness, and redemption. 故事发生在十九世纪的俄罗斯，自私贪婪的商人卡拉马佐夫（李·科布 Lee J. Cobb 饰）和儿子德米特（尤·伯连纳 Yul Brynner 饰）爱上了同一个名叫格鲁申卡（玛丽亚·雪儿 Maria Schell 饰）的女人，为了这个女人，德米特甚至胖揍了自己的父亲。德米特有两个同父异母的弟弟，他们是伊凡（理查德·贝斯哈特 Richard Basehart 饰）和阿廖沙（威廉·夏特纳 William Shatner 饰），除此之外，在卡拉马佐夫家里做厨师的斯米尔加柯夫（艾伯特萨尔米 Albert Salmi 饰）也是荒淫无度的卡拉马佐夫的私生子。 德米特以为格鲁申卡和自己的父亲有一腿，但实际上，格鲁申卡真正的情人是一个波兰人。之后，卡拉马佐夫遭到了逮捕被指控谋杀了自己的父亲。
