War and Peace

A historical film set in Russia. The year is 1805. Napoleon is advancing across Europe and Russia is preparing for war. The narrative follows three people. Pierre is a count's illegitimate son. Awkward, well-meaning, and he does not know what to do. When his father dies a great fortune comes to him. Andrei Bolkonsky is a prince. Married, unhappy, and he wants to go to war; he is looking for a meaning there. Natasha Rostova is a young girl. She grows through the narrative. From there the film moves between war and drawing room. The Austerlitz sequence changes Andrei's line. He is wounded and, looking at the sky, understands something. Pierre makes a bad marriage. His wife Helene is unfaithful and he fights a duel. Natasha and Andrei become engaged. Then she tries to run off with another man and the engagement breaks. In 1812 the French enter Russia. Borodino is the largest section. Thousands of extras and real artillery were used. Moscow is burned. Then the retreat. The French army marches in winter and falls apart. What the narrative is interested in is not war but chance: its idea is that nobody directs history and that even Napoleon is a man carried along by events. Pierre is taken prisoner. He meets a peasant there and gets from him the answer he was looking for. The production is enormous. It was shot in Italy and Yugoslavia with a budget very large for the period. The novel is very long. The film runs three and a half hours and still has to skip much of the book. The philosophical sections are removed entirely. Audrey Hepburn plays Natasha. Henry Fonda plays Pierre, and that casting was criticised at the time. King Vidor directed. Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Mel Ferrer, Vittorio Gassman and Herbert Lom are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes large-scale classic production and period film. Who it is not for: anyone who knows the novel; the adaptation drops its intellectual side entirely and simplifies the characters.