I'm a little biased in my judgement of this film – not only because I've read the novel, but also because I've seen Sergei Bondarchuk's 1960s Soviet adaptation, which is undoubtedly one of cinema's most spectacular epics. Any comparison leaves Vidor's Hollywood adaptation, for all its merits, beaten and conquered. Despite clocking in at a respectable 200 minutes, 'War and Peace (1956)' is simply too short to do justice to Tolstoy's vision. The episodic nature of the novel means that it can't be readily condensed into a regular feature-length time frame, and the film's narrative is often choppily composed to fit everything in.
I think I'm forever destined to imagine the main characters as they appear in the 1960s film, but the main actors here are nevertheless passable. Henry Fonda, sporting a misplaced American twang, brings an accurate passivity of the role of Pierre Bezukhov. Audrey Hepburn half works: early on, her Natasha Rostova lacks the vibrant, bright-eyed naiveté of Lyudmila Savelyeva, but the actress portrays beautifully the compassion and weariness of the "grown-up" Natasha. The battle scenes are large in scale, but curiously narrow in scope, with the Battle of Borodino – in the 1960s film, an astonishing hour of unfettered pandemonium viewed through a God-like lens – seen mostly through the eyes of Pierre.
I think I'm forever destined to imagine the main characters as they appear in the 1960s film, but the main actors here are nevertheless passable. Henry Fonda, sporting a misplaced American twang, brings an accurate passivity of the role of Pierre Bezukhov. Audrey Hepburn half works: early on, her Natasha Rostova lacks the vibrant, bright-eyed naiveté of Lyudmila Savelyeva, but the actress portrays beautifully the compassion and weariness of the "grown-up" Natasha. The battle scenes are large in scale, but curiously narrow in scope, with the Battle of Borodino – in the 1960s film, an astonishing hour of unfettered pandemonium viewed through a God-like lens – seen mostly through the eyes of Pierre.