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War and PeaceRating:
Release Date: 19 August, 2003 Retail Price: $9.98 OUR Price: $9.98 You SAVE: $0.00! Cast: Complete Cast (13 total) |
War and Peace Reviews
A Highly Entertaining Hollywood Interpretation of Tolstoy's Epic Novel.
This audacious endeavor to bring Leo Tolstoy's brilliant epic novel "War and Peace" to the silver screen deserves kudos....and director King Vidor manages, superbly, to coherently condense the novel's almost 1500 pages into 208 minutes of viewing time. Here he successfully captures the flavor of Russia at war and at peace from 1805, around the time of the Battle of Austerlitz, where Napoleon and his army of the First French Empire engaged the armies of the Russian and Austrian Empires to Napoleon's invasion of Mother Russia, and Moscow itself, in 1812.
The focus is on the social, political, and military upheavals of this period in Russia...with some philosophy thrown in. Co-producers Paramount Pictures, Carlo Ponti, and Dino de Laurentiis apparently spent over six million dollars to make this cinematic extravaganza. The phenomenal battle scenes, directed by Mario Soldati, reflect the cost and the effort as, at times, they appear to be taken from newsreels - in living Technicolor. They are detailed and, frequently, heartrending in nature.
One of the major differences between the book and the movie is that while Tolstoy was able to write, in depth, about the lives of five Russian families - both noble and peasant, fleshing out each character brilliantly, director Vidor has had to concentrate, out of necessity, on just a few representative characters from the aristocratic Rostov and Bolkonsky families and Pierre Bezuhov. Pierre begins life as the natural son of a prince and goes on to become legitimized and made, unexpectedly, the extremely wealthy heir to a title and large fortune when his father dies. The serfs and their historic plight are way underrepresented here, however.
Henry Fonda does a good job in his role as Pierre Bezuhov, probably the central character of both book and film - although he comes across as much more of a Yankee than a Russian or European. Beginning as a somewhat befuddled, carefree outsider - an observer of others with a philosophical nature, he becomes burdened with his newfound responsibilities as a nobleman. He aspires to free his peasants from their lives of drudgery and to improve his many estates, but accomplishes little as he becomes mired down in a marriage with a sophisticated, shallow, immoral women whom comes to despise. He is an intimate friend of the Rostov family.
Audrey Hepburn is at her best here as Natasha Rostov, an exuberant adolescent who grows into a beautiful, vivacious woman. Hepburn demonstrates her ability to capture a wide range of moods and emotions as Natasha matures and experiences love, joy, profound sorrow and loss.
Mel Ferrer is the proud, somewhat cynical, tragic Prince Andrei Bolkonsky. Descended from a military family, his only sense of romance is related to war and heroism. This romanticism does not last as he becomes exposed to the true horrors of the battlefield. While Ferrer is not my idea of a talented actor, he does carry this part off well. Prince Andrei is not called upon to portray a variety of emotions.
Although Vidor's "War and Peace" is far from perfect, I think he does an admirable job of capturing Tolstoy's major themes of family relationships, social and political change as a result of war and as the younger generation comes of age. While much of Tolstoy's spiritual and philosophical thoughts and theories are absent here, "War and Peace" works well as a romantic epic... of Russia before, during and after tremendous upheaval.
This is a colorful and entertaining movie with no pretensions of being profound. And then there's Audrey Hepburn...reason enough to rent the epic production.
JANA
Classic story, old movie
This story revolves around Natasha Rostov. She is the daughter of Count Rostov and lives in Moscow. She is a close friend of Count Pierre Bezukhov She falls in love with the widow Prince Andrei Bolkonsky after the Battle of Austerlitz and gets engaged. After Natasha falls in love with another man, Prince Vasili Kuragine, she is forced to break up her engagement with Prince Bolkonsky. Prince Bolonsky then fights Napoleon at the battle of Bordino and gets mortally wounded. This improves Natasha's and Bolonsky's relationship before he dies. After Napoleon retreats from Moscow in 1812, Natasha returns to her family's demolished house and falls in love with the family friend Pierre Bezukhov.
This story is very historically accurate. The only real person in this story is Napoleon Bonaparte. According to wikipedia.org, "Others consider him (Napoleon) a tyrannical dictator whose wars and rule led to the death of millions and the permanent loss of prestige for France" ("Napoleon I of France"). This movie displays Napoleon as a man who only wants to fight. He doesn't care how many people he kills in this movie, he just wants to win glory. The two battles shown in this movie are also very accurate. Napoleonguide.com regarded the battle of Austerlitz as Napoleon Bonaparte's greatest victory; Austerlitz was a sublime trap that destroyed the armies of his enemies Russia and Austria." (napoleonguide.com). This movie showed a decisive French victory. The second battle scene in this movie showed the Battle of Borodino. According to wikipedia.org, "the battle ended with inconclusive tactical results for both armies, and only strategic considerations forced the Russians to withdraw" ("Battle of Borodino"). This movie shows the aftermath of the battle as happening that way.
This movie was set in early 19th century Russia. The movie starts in 1805 and ends in 1812. The movie takes place in Moscow, Borodino, and Austerlitz. All of the locations seemed realistic. Moscow had many Russian Orthodox churches and all of the nobility's houses were baroque in style. These details are correct for early 1800's Moscow. One prop that I thought were well presented were dueling pistols. According to answers.com, duels were common in 19th century Russia and pistols were the weapon of choice for duels (about.com). Another aspect of the movie that was good was the costumes. In Alan Schom's Napoleon Bonaparte there are pictures of the French uniform's and Napoleon's standard dress. In this movie the dress matched the dress shown and described in the book (Schom).
I would rate this movie seven out of ten. Henry Fonda was a terrible actor in this movie. Somehow his Midwestern accent failed to convince me that he was Russian. Mel Ferrer, on the other hand, did a much better job. He looked and acted like he was a noble. The plot moved very slowly in this movie. A lot could have been taken out without disrupting the story at all. One character that was a stereotypical Russian was Pierre. He spent the nights in a pub drinking vodka a lot, which was really not something the nobility did everyday. The story did build to a logical climax and resolution. The story did lose the viewers interest in the middle of the movie because the story was so long, 208 minutes. This movie would have been done much differently if it was made today. One major change would be that the battle scenes would be realistic. This movie made history more clear. If I made this movie I would get better acting and make it about half as long. I would not recommend this movie to another student because it takes so long to get through and it would not hold their interest throughout the whole movie.
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