War and Peace, Part I: Andrei Bolkonsky (1965)

Napoleon's tumultuous relations with Russia including his disastrous 1812 invasion serve as the backdrop for the tangled personal lives of five aristocratic Russian families.

Director:

Sergey Bondarchuk

Writers:

Leo Tolstoy (novel), Sergey Bondarchuk (screenplay)

Stars:

Lyudmila Saveleva, Sergey Bondarchuk, Vyacheslav Tikhonov

1 win.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Lyudmila Saveleva	...	Natasha Rostova
Sergey Bondarchuk	...	Pierre Besukhov
Vyacheslav Tikhonov	...	Prince Andrei Bolkonsky
Viktor Stanitsyn	...	Ilya Andreyevitch Rostov
Kira Golovko	...	Countess Rostova
Oleg Tabakov	...	Nikolai Rostov
Irina Gubanova	...	Soniya
Anatoli Ktorov	...	Nikolai Andreyevich Bolkonsky
Antonina Shuranova	...	Princess Mariya
Anastasiya Vertinskaya	...	Lisa Bolkonskaya
Boris Smirnov	...	Prince Vasili Kuragin
Irina Skobtseva	...	Hélène Bezukhova
Vasiliy Lanovoy	...	Anatol Kuragin
Oleg Efremov	...	Dolokhov
Elena Tyapkina	...	Akhrosimova

Storyline

Napoleon's tumultuous relations with Russia including his disastrous 1812 invasion serve as the backdrop for the tangled personal lives of five aristocratic Russian families.

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Plot Keywords:

imperial russia | year 1805 | based on a novel | battle of austerlitz | roman numeral in title | 

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Genres:

Drama | War

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

Soviet Union

Language:

Russian

Release Date:

14 March 1966 (Soviet Union)

Also Known As:

War and Peace, Part I: Andrei Bolkonsky

Company Credits

Production Co:

Mosfilm

Technical Specs

Runtime:

147 min

Sound Mix:

70 mm 6-Track

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.20 : 1

Did You Know?

Alternate Versions

There are three different versions: The American release, a 360 minute film in two parts (dubbed in English) (see also War and Peace (1968/I)). The Russian release, a series of four films totaling 403 minutes (see also Vojna i mir II: Natasha Rostova (1966), Vojna i mir III: 1812 god (1967) and Vojna i mir IV: Pierre Bezukhov (1967)). Most reviews (including Leonard Maltin's) list this film's running time as 507 minutes, suggesting an unreleased Director's Cut.

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Connections

Version of War & Peace (2016)

User Reviews

The best part

So many good directors began their careers as actors. It's the last thing you'd expect. Bondarchuk, like surprisingly many other actors, knows how to handle a wide screen, how to enchant his images, how to keep seemingly mundane footage alive; he can handle everything from soliloquies to mammoth battle scenes; and he ALMOST manages to put it all together into a perfectly constructed seven-hour epic. Alas, not quite. Instalments three and four (three especially) have the air of having been made in the editing suite, after the director had failed to assemble all the shots he needed. But instalments one and two are perfect. Of the two, Part One is the more breathtaking ... not that there's anything wrong with Part Two, but its scope is narrower: it's heavily pre-occupied with its title character (Natasha), and the "war" part of the story is lost even as a backdrop.

The "war" scenes in Part One are the best in the whole four-part movie, by a long shot - mainly because they have a point. The scenes of Russia away from the front are all implicitly related to the war (and, by some magical means - it's all in Tolstoy, and I don't understand how it works there, either - to each other), and when we see the actual war, crystallised in a single battle, Bondarchuk (as Tolstoy was doing in the early parts of the book) is trying to convey something other than mere chaos.

Watch the whole four-part film. It's amazing. But almost all of the secret of its success is contained within Part One.