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War and Peace (Sergei Bondarchuk, 1967)
This is a true rarity: a film which tells a gargantuan story, based on a nation's most-popular/important novel, which expands the envelope of cinema on several levels. As enormous as much of the film is, it never strays too far from the story of its three central characters: Natasha (Lyudmila Savelyeva), a young, highly-emotional girl who feels strongly for her first love; Prince Andrei (Vyacheslav Tikhonov) who proposes to her but reneges when she acts foolishly; and Pierre (director Bondarchuk), her married cousin, who has always loved her and wishes to correct a mistake. Fifty plus years ago, the entire Soviet Union government contributed $100 million to make this awesome film, thus making it in today's dollars the most expensive film ever made. Even so, the film is mind-boggling and a totally-personal triumph for the director. The battle scenes have probably never been equaled, and the camerawork is creatively-luxuriant and bends to the stories' necessities. It truly is among the most spectacular films ever made, but Bondarchuk can even turn a simple scene into an emotional apocalypse through subtle photography, sound design and music. In fact, there are so many folk songs sung by many of the characters that it occasionally seems to be a haunting musical. This film may well be vastly underrated by me, but if you get a chance to watch it, try to see the Russian DVD (Ruscico); the rest of those on the market greatly reduce its power.
This is a true rarity: a film which tells a gargantuan story, based on a nation's most-popular/important novel, which expands the envelope of cinema on several levels. As enormous as much of the film is, it never strays too far from the story of its three central characters: Natasha (Lyudmila Savelyeva), a young, highly-emotional girl who feels strongly for her first love; Prince Andrei (Vyacheslav Tikhonov) who proposes to her but reneges when she acts foolishly; and Pierre (director Bondarchuk), her married cousin, who has always loved her and wishes to correct a mistake. Fifty plus years ago, the entire Soviet Union government contributed $100 million to make this awesome film, thus making it in today's dollars the most expensive film ever made. Even so, the film is mind-boggling and a totally-personal triumph for the director. The battle scenes have probably never been equaled, and the camerawork is creatively-luxuriant and bends to the stories' necessities. It truly is among the most spectacular films ever made, but Bondarchuk can even turn a simple scene into an emotional apocalypse through subtle photography, sound design and music. In fact, there are so many folk songs sung by many of the characters that it occasionally seems to be a haunting musical. This film may well be vastly underrated by me, but if you get a chance to watch it, try to see the Russian DVD (Ruscico); the rest of those on the market greatly reduce its power.