Amazing! Colossal! 'Gone With the Wind' is a tempest in a teacup compared to this jaw-dropping adaptation of the Tolstoy classic: seven hours of artful splendor, passionate characters, map-altering politics and the biggest, most spectacular battle scenes ever filmed.
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 marvelous to behold. Director Sergei Bondarchuk makes the story work even better at the intimate level. The romantic adventures and heartbreaks of the central trio, Pierre, Natasha and Andrei lead to at least four or five devastatingly emotional highpoints.
In production for five years, War and Peace became four separate features which together run just over seven hours. Provided with unlimited resources which included access to numerous museums and the full cooperation of the Soviet military, Bondarchuk and Mosfilm were able to outdo anything that a big Hollywood studio could achieve. Watching War and Peace even today inspires a sense of awe; the opulent palaces and ballrooms and panoramic battle scenes involving 15,000 soldiers reenacting brutal historical events have a visceral power which even the most sophisticated CGI is still unable to match.
Read more / Download movie Originally published at MovieWorld.ws
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