Guerre et Paix

This epic has the reputation for being a limp, lifeless, mechanical thing; a vulgar simplification of Tolstoy. The latter accusation is partly correct, and thank goodness for it. War and Peace, the novel, has many great things, but also many excrescences: it goes on way too long, padded out with tediously detailed philosophies and theories of war; it also studiously refuses loose ends.

There are flaws. The script, though a model of clarity (unlike most literary adaptations, which concentrate on all the big set-pieces, creating narrative confusion), but short on inspiration. There is a dispiriting, unimaginative reliance on voiceover, and unnecessary soliloquys. The whole thing also goes on way too long.

Mel Ferrer is, without doubt, the worst actor in the world; he plays the dashing, tragic Prince Andrei with all the vigour of a mouldy plank. His part is pivotal, narratively, thematically and symbolically, so he features in a lot of scenes where his monotonous lack of expression makes the film stop dead. Henry Fonda, in many ways ideal as the Tolstoy altar-ego Pierre, who must move morally from observer to actor, is frequently defeated by the terrible dialogue, making this wonderful actor seem clumsy and amateurish. (Herbert Lom, however, manages to suggest great humanity behind the hammy pomp of Napolean).

I only mention these faults to show that the film's critics have their point. I also suggest that WAR AND PEACE is nearly a masterpiece for two reasons. King Vidor, whose work I'm largely (and shamefully) unfamiliar with, directs this film with awesome, authoritive lightness of touch. He pays respectful lip service to the big Tolstoyan themes, focusing particularly on families, the relations between parents and children, old traditional reactionary Russia, and the tentative, youthful impulse towards freedom.

I say lip-service, because his main interest in the film lies elsewhere. It lies in the expression of the emotional life of his characters. For although the film is a massive historical epic, it works best as a domestic melodrama. Characters, who can't express themselves in this hierarchical society, are allowed a voice through the film's direction, which forsakes literal realism, to tell us what is going on in their heads (and hearts). Exaggerated colour and carefully contrived composition offer us a second, more subtle and personal story, to the main, surface narrative. This might make WAR AND PEACE a more right-wing work, ignoring the processes of history and the plight of the serfs, in favour of sympathising with a caste of slave-owners, but Hollywood was never very good at socio-economic analyses.

Vidor's other great theme seems to be nature, and man's relation to it. He has little interest in invoking a real nineteenth century Russia; his Moscow is as exquisitely artificial as Sternberg's THE SCARLET EMPRESS, and his use of architecture and space to both show the distances between people, and the the fathomless emptiness of the soul, is positively Antonionian. With the natural world, however, there is a real feeling, beyond mere backdrop scenery, that is unthinkable in any contemporary Hollywood film. Primarily a movie about people and history, it is eternal nature that watches on, the battles, deaths, retreats. Indeed, it is nature that saves the Russian people, in the face of massive military odds, and it is nature that frames the melancholy, yet hopeful, resolution. (It's also interesting to ask why, at the heighth of the Cold War, Hollywood should decide to make a great Russian epic? To tastelessly evoke a 'glorious' pre-Soviet past? Or to enjoy the razing of Moscow to the ground?)

The second reason to love this film is, of course, the incomparable, beautiful, Audrey Hepburn. She is so right as Natasha (when I read the book as a kid, I pictured Audrey all the way through, without even knowing she had played her on film), the saviour of the book, as well as the film. It is one of the great performances - its modernity and truth blows away the dusty period conventions (indeed, at her first ball, she is as moving as a 50s teenager at her prom). Her intelligence, insight, passion (and she is a lot more erotic in this film than her supporters ever give her credit for) and grace are perfectly in tune with Vidor's conception, and her scenes have an extraordinary emotional force. She is the life of the film, and its moral centre in the absence of a convincing Pierre. The film plods to a slow death without her. The film essays three moral developments - Natasha's, Pierre's and Andrei's, but hers is the most moving and tragic. The change to sadness and understanding of the once gay and vivacious Natasha seems a terrible loss.

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.

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.

Given that trimming Tolstoy's WAR AND PEACE down to the length of one feature film (even at three-and-a-half hours) is probably a fool's errand to begin with, this 1956 version deserves more respect than it's generally gotten -- though the comments here indicate that the film may actually be gaining the respect that critics and film historians have so long denied it.

The movie does suffer from two undeniable shortcomings. First is the atrocious sound recording that has blighted virtually every Italian movie ever made. As some of the comments have noted, movies shot at Rome's Cinecitta had their sound post-dubbed rather than recorded on the set. But actually, this practice was then (and remains) very common. The sound in Italian movies stands out simply because they were so bad at it. The brutal truth is, even the greatest masterpieces of Fellini, De Sica, Rosselini, etc. are less than they might have been because Italian sound technology was so slipshod. And so it is with WAR AND PEACE: it's hard to suspend disbelief when soldiers struggling across a river sound like someone dropping quarters into a toilet.

The other shortcoming is the appalling miscasting of Henry Fonda as Pierre Bezhukov. It's the worst performance of his career, and he looks and sounds about as Russian as a slice of pumpkin pie. One commenter here said Alec Guinness should have played Pierre. It's an intriguing suggestion, and of course Sir Alec was always good. Even better, I think, would have been Peter Ustinov. In 1956 he was Pierre to the very life.

But the rest of the casting is genuinely inspired. Oskar Homolka as Gen. Kutuzov, Barry Jones as Count Rostov, Jeremy Brett as Nikolai, Herbert Lom as Napoleon -- all could hardly be improved upon. And Audrey Hepburn was simply born to play Natasha. And Mel Ferrer as Prince Andrei ... well, he did have his faults as an actor (to say the least!), but at least he looked the part.

Beyond that, the movie has lavish production values, impressive battle scenes, and one truly great and powerful sequence, the French Army's disastrous retreat from Russia, that takes up much of the last hour.

There's no substitute, of course, for reading the novel (I've read it three times myself). But this 1956 movie makes a worthy introduction, and even helps to keep Tolstoy's complex plot straight when you do get around to reading it.