Guerra e Paz - Andrei Bolkonsky

Although one of the commentators above says that few people have read Tolstoi's book, I think his statement may not be exact. If you're someone who loves to read you must have read War and Peace just as people with a minimum of culture and interest in literature have read Proust, Dumas, Victor Hugo or great American novels by Heminghway or other English writers. As far as I'm concerned I read the book after attending 4 times the superb Paris opera house production of Prokofiev masterpiece staged by Francesca Zambello probably one of the most prestigious production ever made in Paris since Strehler's Nozze di Figaro in 1973 and just as a testimony here is the finale worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aGQmluM_bo. It is rare to see the french public giving a standing ovation as that was the case during all the performances I attended. The emotion was at its highest level. I was so enthralled by the performance that I decided to read the book and did it in just one week of course in French not understanding Russian. I had seen when I was a youngster the American film with Mel Ferrer and Audrey Hepburn. And I decided to watch the Sergueï Bondartchouk one recently and bought the whole set of dvds. The main critic I'll make on this Russian version is its length. At many moments the director could have shortened his shots without in the least damaging the atmosphere of the episode concerned. The acting is of course absolutely astounding from the smallest part to the main characters, the photography is amazing especially the battle scenes which at many moments remind you of the epic paintings which have been realized at that time in the late nineteenth century. One can also regret that the french company which has distributed the film did not have it remastered before putting it on the market. Considering the price of those four dvds one could demand for a perfect picture. Nevertheless the movie is a must see and one should also watch the opera taking into account that Prokofiev used for its libretto a very small part of the novel focusing the action on Andrei, Natacha and Peter and the great battle scenes (Moscow and Napoleon debacle in particular). The Paris cast was mainly Russian with a superb Natacha, Peter and Andrei.

So many good directors began their careers as actors. It's the last thing you'd expect. Bondarchuk, like surprisingly many other actors, knows how to handle a wide screen, how to enchant his images, how to keep seemingly mundane footage alive; he can handle everything from soliloquies to mammoth battle scenes; and he ALMOST manages to put it all together into a perfectly constructed seven-hour epic. Alas, not quite. Instalments three and four (three especially) have the air of having been made in the editing suite, after the director had failed to assemble all the shots he needed. But instalments one and two are perfect. Of the two, Part One is the more breathtaking ... not that there's anything wrong with Part Two, but its scope is narrower: it's heavily pre-occupied with its title character (Natasha), and the "war" part of the story is lost even as a backdrop.

The "war" scenes in Part One are the best in the whole four-part movie, by a long shot - mainly because they have a point. The scenes of Russia away from the front are all implicitly related to the war (and, by some magical means - it's all in Tolstoy, and I don't understand how it works there, either - to each other), and when we see the actual war, crystallised in a single battle, Bondarchuk (as Tolstoy was doing in the early parts of the book) is trying to convey something other than mere chaos.

Watch the whole four-part film. It's amazing. But almost all of the secret of its success is contained within Part One.

I'm really impressed so far. The amount of characters and story is teetering on overwhelming (especially because I've never read the novel nor seen another adaption of War & Peace), but I'm following well enough. The battle sequences have been as insane as everyone else has described them, the scope in all the non-battle scenes is impressive too, the camerawork is frequently risky and inventive in ways that work, and there are some surprisingly surreal and philosophical sequences that are actually working for me and not feeling boring (I say that as someone who isn't a huge Tarkovsky fan). Here's hoping the remaining parts are just as good.

Part I of Sergei Bondarchuk's relentlessly ambitious 1965-67 War and Peace, "Andrei Bolkonsky", debuted at the Moscow Film Festival in 1965 and won the Grand Prix. It was also torn apart by critics at that time, according to The Criterion Collection, because it was played at that festival in an unfinished state. It later went to regular theatres, finished, in 1966 and became part of a cinematic phenomenon. Part I gives us an appetizer for the battle scenes to come with Austerlitz. These scenes aren't as impressive as the ones in parts III and IV, but they are gripping and terrifying in their own right.

From the word go, War and Peace boasts an elaborate production speaking to a director with an artistic vision. Nothing is "too much": In Part I, we see a bear attend a debauched aristocrats' party, because why not? We could cut the bear to spare the expense, but no, keep the bear. The creativity is also there, and even if we're looking at something ordinary, it still leaves me impressed. A tree almost comes to life, as if by magic, and we also see some ghostly images as viewed by Natasha. Natasha appears fairly young here, and as with Boyhood (2014), War and Peace offers a rare experience of seeing characters age naturally, a result of a years-long production.

Part I also gives us some philosophy to contemplate by means of Andrei and Pierre's discussions. The fact that Pierre refers to Napoleon here as "the greatest man in the world" is, to say the least, interesting considering what he plans to do in Part IV. If you've finished Part I, fasten your seatbelts - there's a lot more to come.

In addition to being the most faithful adaptation of the novel, this work is really a marvelous masterpiece of direction. Not only the battle scenes were realistic and fascinating, but the detailed portrayal of Moscow's looting, destruction, vandalism and humiliation at the hands of the invaders was striking and expensively arranged that I played those scenes repeatedly to mark all the details.

Bondrachuk as Besukhov was so fit in the role that one forgets he's in fact the director.

The only thing I could never comprehend is why Slava Tikhonov considered this as his worst performance that he thought to quit acting and was surprised when Bondrachuk offered him another role afterwards ... I believe he made a fine Andrey, definitely better than all other known versions. Of course not his own best role but that's related to both the novel itself as well as to the overwhelming cinematographic visuals which make any individual performance just a tiny drop in the ocean of splendid scenes.