War and Peace
Krieg und Frieden
Image courtesy of Park Circus/Paramount
Moscow in 1805. Unlike his pacifist friend Pierre Bezukhov, Prince Andrey Bolkonsky joins the Battle of Austerlitz to prevent the further advance of Napoleon’s army. Young countess Natasha admires Pierre, but falls in love with Andrey. The lives and loves of the protagonists are interwoven with the Russians’ fight against the French army, Napoleon’s capture of Moscow, and the final defeat of his grande armée amid mud and snow in 1812 … A societal portrait, a military oil painting, and a sombre epitaph to grand imperialism – King Vidor’s monumental fresco begins with a constellation like that in So Red the Rose, and ends in the same disillusionment as The Big Parade. The film was shot at Rome’s Cinecittà studios with a record-breaking budget. Yet, above and beyond the pageantry and opulence, War and Peace nonetheless sounds notes of many of Vidor’s fundamental leitmotifs – a critical stance on militarism, as well as the issue of an individual’s responsibility to society. At the same time, cinematographer Jack Cardiff, shooting in widescreen VistaVision, succeeds in rendering period images that have the pictorial quality of the era’s oil paintings shown behind the opening credits.
With
- Audrey Hepburn
- Henry Fonda
- Mel Ferrer
- Vittorio Gassman
- Herbert Lom
- Oscar Homolka
- Anita Ekberg
- Helmut Dantine
- Tullio Carminati
- Barry Jones
Crew
Director | King Vidor |
Screenplay | Irwin Shaw, Bridget Boland, Robert Westerby, King Vidor, Mario Camerini, Ennio De Concini, Ivo Perilli |
Story | Leo Tolstoi Vojna i mir (1865–69) |
Cinematography | Jack Cardiff |
Editing | Stuart Gilmore |
Montage | Leo Catozzo |
Music | Nino Rota |
Sound | Leslie Hodgson |
Art Director | Mario Chiari |
Costumes | Maria De Matteis |
Assistant Directors | Piero Mussetta, Guidarino Guidi |
Producer | Dino De Laurentiis |
Produced by
Ponti-De Laurentiis Società Cinematografica Per Azioni (A Ponti-De Laurentiis Production)
Additional information
Print: Kinemathek Le Bon Film, Basel
(dye-transfer print)