Customer Reviews

War & Peace (1968)

5 star:		(55)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

When I purchased this film, I wasn't paying proper attention, thinking that I was buying yet another version of Tolstoy's famous work; however, it is, in fact, the 1968 Bondarchuk epic which I already owned in widescreen (letterbox) and which has now been packaged and edited by another distributor. Yet, in the end, it's quite a different film!

First of all, this version has been "panned and scanned" to better facilitate a regular screen television -- so, this product is what we generally refer to as "full-screen". Second, there are a few editing differences including some scenes that were not in the widescreen (letterbox) version and misssing a few scenes that were. This does not radically change the film but it was certainly interesting to observe.

Finally, the voiceovers and subtitles are COMPLETELY different, being superior to the original widescreen (letterbox) version. Many more conversation parts are picked up in this version and the translation is far superior. In some cases, the two translations are quite different, this one aligning more with the highly recommended Maude translation of the original book.

In the end, I'm glad to own both versions, as each has its advantages and disadvantages. In picture quality, this one cannot compare to the widescreen (letterbox) version as the clarity was somewhat compromised by the blow-up of the negatives during the "pan and scan" process. Still, it's quite watchable.

As far as the story goes, this is one of the finest war films ever produced. The Hollywood version of War and Peace starring Henry Fonda is a pathetic joke compared to this Russian masterpiece. You can reference my further descriptions of both the book and the widescreen (letterbox) film version on this site for more details concerning the actual story.

I have two final comments: 1. Read the book prior to watching either version of Bondarchuk's epic and you'll be much more gratified in your understanding of the story of Napoleon's invasion of Austria and later of Moscow. 2. If you own a regular TV then this is the version that you want. If you have a widescreen TV and already own the widescreen (letterbox) version, I highly recommend that you grab this one too!

I was fortunate enough to obtain an advance copy of the Ruscico 5-disc box set of WAR AND PEACE recently. Image Entertainment has acquired U.S. distribution rights for it; after some delay, it is scheduled to street in June. The amount of care put into this particular version is obvious. The widescreen anamorphic transfer looks as good as can be expected, considering the condition in which the film has been preserved and the poor quality Soviet stock on which the film was originally shot. The kind of extensive clean-up and digital restoration we are used to from companies like Criterion would have been prohibitively expensive for such a long and poorly preserved film like this. If you keep that in mind while watching the DVD, you'll be satisfied indeed. The sound has also been meticulously restored. If that weren't enough, the set is full of all sorts of interesting supplemental features, including an interview with Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov, the film's composer. An appropriately massive DVD set for the most massive film of all.

On the other hand, Kultur's currently available DVD of Bondarchuk's WAR AND PEACE is a big disappointment. While it also contains the full-length, 403-minute version, it's the same old pan & scan transfer that they used for the VHS over a decade ago. Not only are the sides of the film's original widescreen image lopped off, the top and bottom of the image are slightly cropped too--as a result, the DVD displays only about 50% of the image that we are intended to see, effectively ruining the film's striking visual compositions. The 5-disc set produced by Ruscico and to be released by Image Entertainment is substantially more expensive, but it's the only way to go if you want to see this film properly.

I had the opportunity to peruse this Kultur DVD edition of "War and Peace" enough to evaluate its presentation. Firstly, it's not letterboxed, but full-frame. The opening title sequence only is letterboxed to some extent so as not to cut off all the titles, and this looks as though the original aspect ratio is not particularly wide to begin with. So while not a great deal of picture is cut off from the sides, there is some missing. The print is a good one, and the beauty and power of the film come through, but it does not appear to have been restored to any great extent. This means that the color intensity, contrast, and brightness of the image fluctuates from scene to scene, and sometimes even within one scene (reel changes, perhaps?). The image throughout is a bit soft-focus, and it benefits greatly if you turn up the sharpness control on your monitor. There does not seem to be a great deal of blemishes, dirt, or damage, though.

The English subtitles are printed on the film itself, and therefore not removable. In the scenes where French is spoken, there is a voice superimposed on the soundtrack translating what is being said into Russian, which is of no interest to the English-speaking viewers who will be watching this DVD. In these cases, you have an actor speaking French, an additional voice speaking Russian, and an English subtitle simultaneously, which is distracting to say the least. It's hard to imagine why a print with this feature was chosen, unless it was the absolute best-looking print available.

That brings up the subject of the alternate issue of this film due at the end of December from the Russian Cinema Council (Ruscico). Judging from past Ruscico DVD releases, it may well be a restored, archive-quality print (hopefully letterboxed). Ruscico releases appear at a very slow rate, but when the do they are worth waiting for, which is what you may want to do.

The film still makes a stunning impact, even in this less than perfect presentation. If you prefer full-frame presentation, you may even prefer this one. It seems to me, however, that most cinemaphiles whose interests are arcane enough to extend to this film would want it presented in its original aspect ratio, in an edition as close to the source material as possible. Those people may well prefer to see what Ruscico offers.

This has to be the best book to film adaptation ever made, and certainly one of the most faithful to the source...but buyer beware ! The dubbed version is one to avoid. I find the musical sound of the Russian language adds to the enjoyment of this magnificent film, and the subtitles are a beautiful translation of Tolstoy's massive tale of complex charaters, caught up in the tragic events of their time.

6 hours and 43 minutes long, it took over 5 years to make and at a huge cost (over 100 million in 1968 dollars). Writer/Director/Actor Sergei Bondarchuk tried, and I think succeeded, in bringing a taste of this era to the screen...the details in the sets, costumes, and monumental battle scenes, are simply astounding.

The acting is superb, down to the smallest bit part. Bondarchuk is a magnificent Pierre, Ludmila Savelyeva luminous as Natasha, and Vyacheslav Tikhonov, with his perfect profile and lean looks is exactly as I pictured Prince Andrei when I read the book many years ago.

This is the grandest of epics, and can't be compared to any other film in existence. Bondarchuk's poetic vision of Tolstoy's masterpiece is thought provoking, and very moving. It's well worth the many hours spent with it, and it gets better with repeated viewing !

The good news is that Kultur put this superb masterpiece out on DVD. The BAD news is that this epic film was NOT digitally restored. This is a pan-and-scan of a poor print. The original aspect ratio (2.40:1) of the 70mm Super Sovscope is gone, and so is much of the spectacle of the original film. They did manage to keep the 4 part original release sequence, although somewhat shorter. I'm waiting for a restored version that will do justice to the best film version of a timeless classic.

P.S. A second release on DVD has just now become available. On 5 discs, digitally mastered into anamorphic widescreen from the 70mm original elements and it's absolutely gorgeous (5 stars). Look for it!!

Sergei Bondarchuk, as director and central actor, creats a masterpiece that not only renders the heart and soul of the book, but tells it in purely cinematic terms that takes the movie way beyond any normal book to film translation. This is, literally, a beautiful film, amazing to watch. The acting is so finely cast and etched, you remember all the characters sharply in your memory. What seems at times to be merely conventional quickly shifts into almost surreal flowing imagery, thrusting you inside the characters, seeing and feeling as they do in the story. And on top of this, Tolstoy's great theme of the common man versus the makers of history in war and peace is carefully and effortlessly laid out from Napoleon, General Kutusov, the four central families, down to the servants. The soul and courage of the Russian people in the face of impending disaster is quietly and forcefully portrayed. The sacking of Moscow by the French makes "Gone With The Wind"'s Atlanta appear like a tacky backyard marshmellow roast in comparison. The destruction of the French army by the Russian winter in their retreat from Moscow brings one of history's great military failures vividly to life. Think of it: the French went into Russia with 500,000 men and came out with less than 20,000. Anyone who thinks they have seen all the great films, but not this one, especially in the Russian version, has missed a seminal work.

A gargantuan version of Tolstoy's national epic, approached as a priority as important as the Soviet space program, War and Peace is surely the biggest production ever put on film, with entire armies filling the screen and covering vast landscapes. The recreation of the Napoleonic era in St. Petersburg and Moscow is a wonderment. Director Sergei Bondarchuk makes the story work even better at the intimate level. The romantic adventures and heartbreaks of the story's central trio, Pierre, Natasha and Andrei lead to at least 4 or 5 devastatingly emotional highpoints.
Previously, there was the 1956 Dino DeLaurentiis version. Except for some awkward casting, it wasn't half bad, but it pales beside the opulence and scope of this colossus. Ruscico's version is both longer and better-presented than previous releases, and Image has packaged it with helpful extras and easily-navigated menus. More on that below.
Savant was excited to see this pricey-but-exceptional DVD release; Ruscico has a reputation for quality releases of hard-to-see Soviet pictures, and War and Peace is certainly the prize title, at least for Western audiences unfamiliar with the majority of Mosfilm's output. I saw the American release when 16 years old, serialized over two weeks in a fancy theater in San Bernardino. I can't say I followed the story well, and mostly remember the grainy, washed out picture and the distracting English dubbing - Natasha's voice squeaked like Minnie Mouse. But the eye-popping visuals stayed burned into my memory, especially a God's eye view, receding into the heavens, of the Austerlitz battlefield spread out below. It looked as if it took in miles of smoke and fighting.
In Russian with subs in a number of languages, the new Ruscico / Image DVD is a completely different viewing experience. The Russian voices are beautiful, and it's easy to catch cultural things we had only read about, such as the St. Petersburg elite opting to speak French for many conversational details. It's not 70mm, but on a big widescreen television, the scope of the visuals can be almost overwhelming.
Ruscico's DVD of War and Peace is handsomely presented on 4 discs in a thankfully easy-to-understand package. The transfer image isn't going to be able to compete with restorations done here, however. War and Peace was shot in a Soviet color system in 70mm, and the colors are a muted set of pastels we aren't used to. Either the age of the elements, or the reduction printing, or bad storage has given many scenes a dupey look, with slightly fluctuating contrast. The image is stable and intact, but there are occasional scratches and slight damage.
Either that one bad shot was an isolated instance, or most of the time we're too caught up in the story to notice such things. I should point out that I viewed the discs on a 65" monitor that magnifies these kinds of flaws, so many viewers will probably be completely unaware of them.
The DVD producers have included a generous allotment of extras, listed below. A fifth disc contains a couple of Soviet docus on Tolstoy and an elaborate commemorative behind-the-scenes piece. It starts with the stars at a Moscow premiere, and then backtracks to show how many scenes were filmed. The cameraman is on roller skates in the ballroom scene, and a trucking scene through the battlefield shows exactly how some of the more amazing shots were captured. The cameramen use portable 70mm cameras of a kind I've never seen, that look every bit as sophisticated as ours.
In one of the interviews, the President of the Mosfilm studio says that after the years of filming, War and Peace wasn't unanimously praised in the Soviet Union. Everybody saw it, but not everyone thought it was a masterpiece. Audiences are audiences, Russian or American, and after those 4 or 5 transcendant moments in the picture, the ending does seem rather downplayed and anti-climactic. But seeing the show now after 35 more years of film history, this enormous epic seems more of an accomplishment than ever.

P.S. To watch the movie preview video clip you can on russianDVD.com website for free.

If you want a fascinating viewing and reading experience that brings War And Peace to life like never before read the Constance Garnett translation of Tolstoy's masterpiece at the same time you are viewing Bondarchuk's film.

You will discover that the English subtitles are lifted directly from Garnett's translation and that director/actor Bondarchuk created many aspects of the novel in his film exactly the way Garnett describes it in her translation. Conveniently the film is divided into chapters that correlate with many chapters in the novel, e.g. The Drinking Party is chapter vi of the novel; Natasha Turns Thirteen is chapter viii, Count Bezukhov's Stroke is xx & xxi etc.

The film unfolds as the novel does in a series of episodes that slowly outlines the action and a plot of epic proportions. It is fascinating to read a chapter and then see that chapter bought to life on the screen just the way Tolstoy envisioned the details in his novel; to read Tolstoy's description of a character down to the expression on the face and gestures of body language and then observe how perfectly Bondarchuk has cast that character and focused on the gestures Tolstoy describes is a marvel in itself.

Reading the novel and viewing Bondarchuk's film together results in a coherence not to be found in either separately. There are many lapses in dialogue in the film where Bondarchuk is focusing on a scene or action that Tolstoy describes in detail, the total significance of which one misses unless one has read it in the novel.

Because Tolstoy wrote in such epic proportions and in such detail it was impossible for Bondarchuk to recreate the entire novel in his film. For example the battle of Schon Grabern presented by Bondarchuck is the climax of a series of battles covered in such detail by Tolstoy that they couldn't all be rendered into film. This is true of episodes amongst the families as well. But by studying the novel and film together one gains a total understanding and a unique perspective on this remarkable story.

Bondarchuk's obsession with historical accuracy, period authenticity, and faithfulness to Tolstoy's vision brings the characters and the war and peace within these families of Russian aristocrats utterly to life in the events of the Napoleonic Wars, and enjoying the novel and this film together is an epic experience in itself.

This has to be the greatest film ever made. It's certainly the most expensive, but that doesn't tell the whole story. In the English-dubbed version, which is slightly abridged from the original Russian-language version, the film quality is a little ragged, the color looks a little washed-out for about the first third of the film, and the dubbing isn't perfectly done, but in spite of these drawbacks the greatness of it comes through (can we hope for a restoration in the near future?). The absolute fidelity to Tolstoy and the understanding of what makes a great film are a combination unequaled. The battle of Borodino in this film is, as far as I know, the largest battle ever staged for a movie. One can only wonder how a director handles something of that size. Then there's the burning and looting of Moscow, there's the retreat of the French, rank after rank, through mud and snow... But the lives and personalities of the characters in the film really stand out. To repeat something said by another reviewer, you will fall in love with Natasha just as Pierre did. That'll happen about the time of the ball in Petersburg, where she dances with Prince Andrei, in what I'm convinced is the most romantic scene in any movie anywhere. Never before or since, in literature or in film, has there been so enchanting, so captivating a heroine. In the 1956 Hollywood version, Audrey Hepburn had the role, but she was mainly playing Audrey Hepburn. (Incidentally, Henry Fonda, though likeable, was badly miscast as Pierre Bezukhov. He walks through that film like a cowboy wearin' fancy duds an' spectacles.) But Ludmila Savelyeva here IS Natasha. ...And, of course, there's the superb direction throughout by Sergei Bondarchuk (Pierre), there's the powerful and moving score by Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov...You should see both the English-dubbed version and the original Russian-with-subtitles. The latter is more complete, with gorgeous color, but the former has a more immediate emotional impact due to the lack of the extra step in reading a subtitle, and the voices chosen for the overdubbing are quite good, as is that of the narrator, Norman Rose. In a way, they're two different films, but two different films that are the greatest film ever made. It will truly stay with you. (BL, Tucker, GA)

I just spent the weekend watching the new DVD special edition of this work. In one word: amazing!! The sheer scope of the picture, location shots, costumes, acting, etc. combines to present an authentic vision of early 19th century Russia. You actually feel like you have been transported back in time. What sets this picture apart is the fact that the actors are really Russian. You can "feel" the parts they play. The beginning of the picture is very slow, as other reviewers have reported. However, the whole environment of the film soon engulfs you. Stand out scenes are the sleigh rides with the horse bells, the ballroom scenes and obviously the battle sections (200,000 extras, the Russian army).Of note is the use of candlelite to envoke an accurate image on the evening scenes. Authentic set pieces, paintings, pottery, etc. were provided by Russian museums. Picture David Lean's epic Dr. Zivago extended to double its length and triple its quality. No wonder the country almost went bankrupt producing it. The extra disc provides a fascinating "making of" sequence which is a must see for any epic film buff. If you have not seen this movie, buy the special edition. It is truly one of the best motion pictures ever made and definitely worth the cost of purchase. You will never want to see "Gone With The Wind" again.