Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Mel Ferrer
Despite its reputation as an oversimplified epic, King Vidor's War and Peace remains a stellar showcase of Hollywood prestige. While Cecil B. De Mille was reviving ancient Egypt for The Ten ...( read more
), Vidor was transforming Italian countryside into war-torn Russia, bringing massive resources to bear on this sumptuous, if ultimately misguided adaptation of Tolstoy's classic. Given the marquee casting of Audrey Hepburn as Natasha and then-husband Mel Ferrer as decorated battle hero Prince Andrei, this is a movie you watch for star value, not literary fidelity (for the latter, look to Sergei Bondarchuk's Russian version). Henry Fonda serves Tolstoy more effectively as Pierre, whose passive observation of Napoleon's invasion turns this grand moral tale into an intimate study of individual passions. The battle scenes (directed by Mario Soldati) remain impressive, as does the film's grand parade of pomp and circumstance. Slow, regal, and peppered with brilliance, this epic falls short of classic but it's still a visual feast. --Jeff Shannon
DVD Release Date: December 3, 2002
Stats: 233 reviews
Not nearly as good as it could have been. Hepburn is wonderful, and Fonda's performance is also commendable, although Ferrer is stony and unemotional. Released in the same year as Gone with the Wind, it had a lot to live up to, and honestlly failed. However, it is still a lavish ...( read more)
This movie was really lame bcuz it was a whole love story and nothing about the russian revolution wich its the main story in the original film
bad acting, audrey overplays her role
i didnt like it
Set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic invasion of Russia, "War and Peace", the novel, follows the lives of a large cross-section of upper class Russian society. Tolstoy describes life, love and war in fantastic detail, and the reader is swept along in the great tide of human...( read more)
One of the best classics. Successful in bringing the novel into the world of images.
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