WAR AND PEACE Movie Review

Thirty years ago, Sergei Bondarchuk's massive, six-hour-plus-change adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace reputedly cost 100 million dollars, which would be the rough equivalent of 400 million today. That makes Titanic and Batman and Robin look like low-budget indies by comparison. War and Peace may not have been one of the world's great movies, but it is valuable in another way—as a tipoff that the fall of communism was inevitable. The production, hype, and release of the 100 million—dollar War and Peace was pure capitalist showmanship, in which the size and scope of the production were the sizzle that was being sold. Though some critics of the day were enthusiastic, they all focused on the cost of the thing rather than its success or failure as literary adaptation. Who can blame them? (We see the same kind of thing today on the front page of the Wall Street Journal when, after spending 140 million on Armageddon, Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney's Joe Roth say that they wish critics would stop talking about size and flashy style of their movie and simply focus on Armageddon‘s “substance.”) Does anybody actually remember much about War and Peace, other than being able to claim you sat through it? I remember that when the picture ended, the audience response was similar to the relieved applause you hear from passengers when a particularly rough flight finally touches down on the runway. I recall some BIG battle scenes and some BIG ballrooms. The color was muddy. Despite the atrocious dubbing, it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. It is available on video in a subtitled version. It's your move, though. I can't spare another six hours. Plus change.

NEXT STOP … War and Peace (1956), Napoleon, Waterloo

1968 373m/C RU Lyudmila Savelyeva, Sergei Bondarchuk, Vyacheslav Tihonor, Hira Ivanov-Golarko, Irina Gubanova, Antonina Shuranova; D: Sergei Bondarchuk; C: Jack Cardiff. Academy Awards ‘68: Best Foreign Film; Golden Globe Awards ‘69: Best Foreign Film; New York Film Critics Awards ‘68: Best Foreign Film; Nominations: Academy Awards ‘68: Best Art Direction/Set Decoration. VHS, LV KUL, TVC, TPV