War and Peace (film series)
Released in four installments throughout 1966 and 1967, the film starred Bondarchuk in the leading role of Pierre Bezukhov, alongside Vyacheslav Tikhonov and Ludmila Savelyeva, who depicted Prince Andrei Bolkonsky and Natasha Rostova.His friend, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, joins the Imperial Russian Army as aide-de-camp of General Mikhail Kutuzov in the War of the Third Coalition against Napoleon.In August 1959, King Vidor's American-Italian co-production War and Peace was released in the Soviet Union, attracting 31.4 million viewers and gaining wide acclaim.The impending 150th anniversary of the 1812 French Invasion, as well as the worldwide success of Vidor's adaptation of the Russian national epic – at a time when the USSR and the United States were competing for prestige – motivated the Soviet Minister of Culture Yekaterina Furtseva to begin planning a local picture based on Leo Tolstoy's novel.As his selection to the position seemed secure, several officials in the Ministry of Culture offered it to forty-year-old Sergei Bondarchuk, who had completed his directorial debut, Fate of a Man, in 1959.Razzakov believed he had done so after realizing his chances were slim: Bondarchuk, whose career began only during the Thaw, represented a generation of young directors promoted by Nikita Khrushchev's Kremlin to replace the old filmmakers from the Stalin era.[11] On 3 April 1961, Vladimir Surin, the director-general of the Mosfilm studios, sent Furtseva a letter requesting to approve the adaptation of a script for a film in three parts based on War and Peace, as well as to allocate 150,000 Rbls in funds.[13] They chose to downplay or exclude completely several of Tolstoy's plotlines and themes, in order not to make the film too cumbersome: the episodes concerning Nikolai Rostov and Maria Bolkonskaya were reduced, and Anatole Kuragin received a slightly better treatment.Eventually, scent hounds supplied by the Ministry of Defense chased down the wolves—provided by the zoological department of the State Studio for Popular Science Films—while the borzois caught them.[21] Anastasiya Vertinskaya, Lyudmila Gurchenko and other known actresses wanted to portray Natasha Rostova, but Bondarchuk chose the inexperienced 19-year-old ballerina Ludmila Savelyeva, who had just recently graduated from Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet.[23] Nikita Mikhalkov was cast as Natasha's little brother, Petya Rostov; however, as he was in the age of adolescence and quickly growing up, he had to abandon the role in favor of the younger Sergei Yermilov.Although they considered purchasing it from Kodak or from ORWO in the German Democratic Republic, they eventually decided to use Soviet-made film stock manufactured in the Shostka Chemical Plant, both because of financial shortage and for considerations of national pride.This, as well as the need to cover large crowds from many angles, forced the director to repeat many of the scenes; some of the more elaborate battle sequences were retaken more than forty times.On 20 May 1963, half a year after commencing photography, they wrote to Surin, asking to be dismissed from work on the picture and stating that Bondarchuk "dictated without consulting with the crew".On 15 June, the production team went to Leningrad, where shooting took place in the Hermitage Museum, the Summer Garden, the Peter and Paul Fortress and in Vasilyevsky Island.[43] Upon his return to the studio on 7 July, Bondarchuk was abruptly instructed by his superiors to abandon all other work and focus on preparing the first two parts for the 1965 Moscow Film Festival, contrary to all former designs and while they were far from finished.[46] In spite of the tight schedule, the parts Andrei Bolkonsky and Natasha Rostova were completed and were submitted to Mosfilm's directorate on 30 June 1965, less than a week before the festival.[64] The 1979 Guinness Book of World Records published a similar figure, claiming that War and Peace was "the most expensive film ever made" based on that "the total cost has been officially stated to be more than $96 million".[70] Natasha Rostova, which opened in July with 1,405 copies disseminated, performed less well and attracted 36.2 million viewers in the same time period, reaching the third place in the 1966 box office,[71] although it would have been ninth if counted in 1967.[72] Russian film critic Sergei Kudryavtsev assessed that the series' domestic returns were "probably in the range" of 58 million Rbls,[68] while Razzakov assumed that each ticket cost an average price of 25 kopecks.[74] In East Germany, the state-owned DEFA studio produced a slightly shorter edition of the series, dubbed into German, which ran for 409 minutes and maintained the four-part arrangement of the original.[80] Its premiere was held in the DeMille Theater, New York, on 28 April 1968, and attended by actresses Ludmila Savelyeva and Irina Skobtseva, as well as Soviet ambassadors Anatoly Dobrynin and Yakov Malik.[87] The readers of Sovetskii Ekran, the official publication of the State Committee for Cinematography, chose Savelyeva and Vyacheslav Tikhonov for the best actress and actor of 1966, in recognition of their appearance in the picture.[98] Soviet film critic Rostislav Yurenev wrote that War and Peace was "the most ambitious and monumental adaptation of the greatest work of Russian literature […] set out to convey in tremendous scope the historical conception of Leo Tolstoy, his extraordinarily vivid and profound depiction of humanity".[99] In a second review, he added: "the desire for ever greater depth of penetration into the human character, of every aspect of it […] led to Sergei Bondarchuk's adaptation of Tolstoy."[100] Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reviewer Brigitte Jeremias stated the film presented history "with great meticulousness and choreographic quality […].Chauvinism be damned—I'm putting Gone with the Wind into historic perspective and second place, for certainly War and Peace is not only […] the finest epic of our time, but also a great and noble translation of a literary masterpiece, surpassing our expectation and imagination.Aitken added that at the same time, the picture employed several "overtly modernist" techniques: "symbolic, anti-realist use of color […] disembodied speech, rapid editing […] reflexive, hand-held camera".[110] Lev Anninsky, on the contrary, viewed Bondarchuk's picture as a symbol of state-approved cinema, writing it was the "antithesis" of and a "total contrast" to Andrei Rublev, which he saw as representing the nonconformist approach in the field.Anninsky commented that War and Peace was imbued with patriotic motifs and "warm Russian tradition, which engulfs the viewer" while Tarkovsky had no such sense of "history as if it is a mother's womb".
War and Peace (disambiguation)Sergei BondarchukWar and PeaceLeo TolstoyLudmila SavelyevaVyacheslav TikhonovVyacheslav OvchinnikovMosfilmRussianromanizeddrama film1869 novelPierre BezukhovAndrei BolkonskyNatasha RostovaSoviet ArmyMoscow International Film FestivalGolden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language FilmAcademy Award for Best Foreign Language FilmSaint Petersburgillegitimate sonImperial Russian ArmyMikhail KutuzovWar of the Third CoalitionNapoleonHélène KuraginaAnatoleBattle of SchöngrabernBattle of Austerlitzattends her first ballNapoleon's Army invades RussiaBattle of BorodinoMoscowMoscow is set ablazeGrande ArméeBattle of KrasnoiBoris ZakhavaAnatoly KtorovAntonina ShuranovaMaria BolkonskayaOleg TabakovNikolai RostovViktor StanitsynKira GolovkoIrina SkobtsevaVasily LanovoyAnatole KuraginIrina GubanovaSonya RostovaOleg YefremovEduard MartsevichAleksandr BorisovNikolai RybnikovAlexander I of RussiaGeorgy MillyarNonna MordyukovaAnna TimiryovaBoris KhmelnitskyAlexander Ostermann-TolstoyNikolay TrofimovVladislav StrzhelchikLudwig von WolzogenCarl von ClausewitzGalina KravchenkoLouis-Nicolas DavoutJacques LauristonAlexander BalashovAnastasiya VertinskayaPyotr BagrationFrancis IIPetya RostovNikita MikhalkovCount BenningsenKarl Mack von LeiberichFranz von WeyrotherMichael Andreas Barclay de TollyPaisi KaysarovNikolai GrinkoKing Vidorco-production1812 French InvasionMinister of CultureYekaterina FurtsevaDer SpiegelMikhail RommSergei GerasimovIvan PyryevFate of a ManNikita KhrushchevStalinState Committee for CinematographyVladimir KurasovMarkian Popovshakosline producerTranscaucasian Military DistrictTurkestan Military DistrictMoscow City Policewolf huntingborzoisscent houndsOleg StrizhenovMoscow Art TheatreInnokenty SmoktunovskyGrigori KozintsevHamletYury VlasovLyudmila GurchenkoVaganova Academy of Russian BalletpelisseGerman Democratic RepublicShostka Chemical PlantKommersantprincipal photographyNovodevichy ConventMoscow KremlinYasnogorsky DistrictMukachevoZakarpattia OblastCarpathian Military DistrictSvaliavaDorogobuzhBorodinoJulian CalendarNational Geographicsappers