War and Peace-Russian Style-The Film Adaptation Of Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” (1956)

DVD Review 

By Sam Lowell

 

War and Peace, starring Henry Fonda, Audrey Hepburn, Mel Ferrer and a cast of thousands, directed by the legendary King Vidor, adapted from the novel of the same name by Leo Tolstoy, 1956 

On major works of world literature what should a thoughtful person do first-read that classic work, even if as in the case of the film adaptation under review of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace the novel runs to a thousand closely-spaced pages, or the film adaptation where, as here, it is available in some version. Well, I think naturally that one should read the book first, or as here, slug through the book but maybe I am old-fashioned about books in the digital age and younger reviewer would reverse the order. Each way this is a must read or see.

Of course most people know that Tolstoy’s master work was his take on the battles royal between Napoleon and his French Revolution-derived armed forces and new ideas and old serf-ridden Mother Russia, his homeland back in the early 19^th century when the figure of Napoleon struck fear or delight in most of Europe. Tolstoy’s take here is that good the old despotic Czarist order needed defending against the invaders from the West whatever his later more pacifistic notions might be. History is a funny mistress and so it very much depends on which side of the political spectrum you are on how you see the figure of Napoleon and of the after effects on the French Revolution on the historical process. Most leftists, including later Russian leftists, sensed a liberating mission, maybe distorted, but liberating nevertheless by Napoleon’s push to Russia (which as with the French Revolution would presumably free the endlessly soiling peasants). Obviously the novel takes a different tact and certainly the film paints Napoleon as nothing but a low-rent invader of sweet Mother Russia stirring the blood of every Russian patriot even those few who had sympathy for the French Revolution.

Well that is the historic slant part because what this film is about beyond the various umpteen battles with Napoleon is an old-fashioned coming of age romance, and about thwarted romance if you think about it. Here against that military campaign backdrop one Countess Rostov, played by angelic Audrey Hepburn in her ingénue days, Prince Andre, a Russian military officer as well as noble played by Mel Ferrer and Pierre, a civilian intellectual and inheritor of a landed estate, played by Henry Fonda go through a long process of both longing for love and being thwarted in that quest by the various turns of military fortune and personal obstacles.    

In the end, as at the beginning, it will be whoever is left standing, and the Countess and Pierre will finally be the two after more trials and tribulations than you could shake a stick at including Pierre’s marriage to an unfaithful wife, the Countess’ infatuation with ne’er-do-well Army officer, her devotion to the widowed Prince Andre before he passed away from his mortal wounds, and Pierre’s captivity as a prisoner of the French Army love will out, love as life will out. Oh yeah, and those monumental battles with a cast of thousands which take up the rest of the film act as filler for this epic. By the way if you are going to watch this one end to end better have plenty of popcorn at hand since it is over three and one-half hours long. And by all means take a few weeks and read the literary classic to get the other story lines of the minor characters who are left out of the film.