Guerra e Paz

I've read the book and seen this version several times. The main drawback is of course time.

Thus, it must inevitably slight: a) many of the characters who bring joy to reading the novel - the princely father of the Kuragins, Sonja's story, Nicholas falling in love with Marya, the forgiveness by Bolkonsky (Ferrer) of Anatole Kuragin when his leg is amputated on a table beside which he is lain out, etc. and b) much of the philosophy contained in the book - whether about the masons or the purpose of life.

However, as a sort of highlights version of the novel, I thought it dealt well with the main lines of the plot.

It also is clearly 1950s film-making. There is little sense indoors of the lighting of the time, the sets look generally clean or deliberately destroyed (rather than mysterious and gloomy). In fact, the entire film appears all too clearly delineated - there is little of the kind of murkiness one would find in such a movie being made today - say, the way Schindler's List looks - or The Last Emperor looks.

The movie is also benefitted by having Audrey Hepburn, Anita Ekberg and John Mills - physically they are EXACTLY what I imagined of these characters - and I thought Mills and Hepburn were excellent. (And what Ekberg lacked in ability to convey emotion, she gained from her jaw-dropping embodiment of the buxom blonde!). The Henry Fonda choice for Bezuhov is an odd one - he's not the first person I think of when I think of a huge heavy awkward bear of a man. He did the best he could but was clearly miscast. Prince Bolkonsky (the father) and the Count and Countess Rostov were first rate - so were the choices for Napoleon, Homolka as Kutuzov, Kuragin, Dolokhov and the Rostov family. Mel Ferrer was ok - but imagine, say, the Terence Stamp of Far From the Madding Crowd and how he could have done.

All in all, this is clearly a movie of its time in cinematography, sets, the clearly drawn lines of the script - but it is entertaining and does about as well as possible in dramatizing in 3 1/2 hours a book of over 1000 pages.

Perhaps the best you can say for Vidor's long, (200 minutes), but surprisingly compact version of Tolstoy's novel is that it is no disgrace despite being 'internationalized' for mass consumption. (It's got an Italian producer, was filmed in Italy, an American director and a large cast from all over the place, leading in some cases to some very unconvincing dubbing). But it's also largely intelligent, well enough acted, particularly by Audrey Hepburn who is an enchanting Natasha, and visually splendid. No less than eight writers worked on the script which fails conspicuously to translate Tolstoy's 'grand ideas' into anything other than Readers-Digest form but then even Bondarchuk's even longer Russian version didn't quite manage the leap from page to screen. You may be forgiven, then, for thinking you are watching nothing more than a grandiose soap-opera even if it's a cut above run-of-the-mill historical 'soap-operas'. But in an age when three-hour-plus epics were ten-a-penny it didn't catch on and come Oscar time it was largely over-looked. (The even bigger but vastly inferior "Around the World in 80 Days" took Best Picture while "War and Peace" failed to snag a nomination in that category). But it is worth seeing if only for Hepburn's under-rated performance and for Henry Fonda, too old and miscast as Pierre, but bringing his liberal gravitas to the part, all the same.

As another IMDb'er has mentioned, this film is one spectacular visual moment after another, but unfortunately with really terrible sound. The reason for the bad sound is that the film was produced at Cinecitta studios in Rome and at that time, all films there were shot without live sound. Everything was dubbed later: dialogue, music and all ambient sounds. In addition, recording facilities in Italy were primitive (this was only 11 years after the catastrophe of WWII), resulting in the canned quality of most of the dialogue. (One of the reasons Antonioni's films were such a breakthrough in the following decade was his use of live sound recording and location shooting).

Anyway, War and Peace is a most worthwhile film experience for Vidor and Cardiff's Technicolor Vistavision visuals, for the screenplay which is often quite beautifully written, and for many fine performances from some exceedingly charismatic film actors, especially the astonishing Audrey Hepburn. There are close-ups of her that will make your heart stop.

King Vidor's WAR AND PEACE was never going to do proper justice to Tolstoy's massive novel, certainly not at four hours and certainly not in production code era Hollywood, but for what it is, it is a decent spectacle. I'm not crazy about the film myself (but it must be noted that 1950s biblical and historical epics are genres I have no use for), though I am glad I watched it if only for one thing: Audrey Hepburn as Natasha. She was rarely as perfectly cast as she was here. The same cannot be said for Henry Fonda (too old) or Mel Ferrer (not that great an actor in general).

Quite a disappointing story about some people that get involved with each other. This makes the movie some swooning story about love (one might say it becomes some sort of Jane Austen story, which is not altogether bad, but has nothing to do with Tolstoy) It fails to capture the book's most beautiful moments: -Rostow's 'tremendous courage' when he flee-ed from advancing enemy forces after being wounded by his own horse. (Which showed the stupidity of war) -Pierre's duel (which is included, but not in very satisfying way (for instance, it misses Pierre's certainty that he would die in the duel and his flirt with death)) and the following conversion to freemasonry

What is worse, the film goes against the spirit of the book, when it emphasis's the prophesying moments. (While the book shows the exact counter case: the complete unpredictability where things would go next) Although I wouldn't name this a good effort to make a film out of 'War and Peace', I don't think it can be done in any satisfying way.