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War and Peace

  • 19561956
  • PGPG
  • 3h 28m
IMDb RATING
6.7/10
10K
YOUR RATING
  • Cast & crew
  • User reviews
  • Trivia
  • IMDbPro
War and Peace (1956)
Official Trailer
Play trailer3:18
1 Video
73 Photos
  • Drama
  • Romance
  • War

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

IMDb RATING
6.7/10
10K
YOUR RATING
  • Director
    • King Vidor
  • Writers
    • Lev Tolstoy(based on the novel by)
    • Bridget Boland(adaptation)
    • Robert Westerby(adaptation)
  • Stars
    • Audrey Hepburn
    • Henry Fonda
    • Mel Ferrer
Top credits
  • Director
    • King Vidor
  • Writers
    • Lev Tolstoy(based on the novel by)
    • Bridget Boland(adaptation)
    • Robert Westerby(adaptation)
  • Stars
    • Audrey Hepburn
    • Henry Fonda
    • Mel Ferrer
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 72User reviews
    • 32Critic reviews
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Nominated for 3 Oscars
      • 5 wins & 13 nominations total

    Videos1

    War and Peace
    Trailer 3:18
    War and Peace

    Photos73

    8514-20 "War and Peace" Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda
    8514-23 "War and Peace" Audrey Hepburn, Mel Ferrer and Henry Fonda
    8514-4 "War and Peace" Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda
    8514-7 "War and Peace" Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda
    8514-24 "War and Peace" Audrey Hepburn
    War and Peace (1956)
    War and Peace (1956)
    War and Peace (1956)
    Henry Fonda, Audrey Hepburn, and Mel Ferrer in War and Peace (1956)
    Audrey Hepburn and Vittorio Gassman in War and Peace (1956)
    Audrey Hepburn in War and Peace (1956)
    Audrey Hepburn in War and Peace (1956)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Audrey Hepburn
    Audrey Hepburn
    • Natasha Rostovaas Natasha Rostova
    Henry Fonda
    Henry Fonda
    • Pierre Bezukhovas Pierre Bezukhov
    Mel Ferrer
    Mel Ferrer
    • Prince Andrei Bolkonskyas Prince Andrei Bolkonsky
    Vittorio Gassman
    Vittorio Gassman
    • Anatol Kuraginas Anatol Kuragin
    Herbert Lom
    Herbert Lom
    • Napoleonas Napoleon
    Oskar Homolka
    Oskar Homolka
    • Field Marshal Kutuzovas Field Marshal Kutuzov
    • (as Oscar Homolka)
    Anita Ekberg
    Anita Ekberg
    • Helene Kuraginaas Helene Kuragina
    Helmut Dantine
    Helmut Dantine
    • Dolokhovas Dolokhov
    Tullio Carminati
    Tullio Carminati
    • Prince Vasili Kuraginas Prince Vasili Kuragin
    Barry Jones
    Barry Jones
    • Prince Mikhail Andreevich Rostovas Prince Mikhail Andreevich Rostov
    Milly Vitale
    Milly Vitale
    • Lisa Bolkonskayaas Lisa Bolkonskaya
    Lea Seidl
    • Countess Rostovas Countess Rostov
    Anna Maria Ferrero
    Anna Maria Ferrero
    • Maria Bolkonskayaas Maria Bolkonskaya
    Wilfrid Lawson
    Wilfrid Lawson
    • Prince Bolkonskyas Prince Bolkonsky
    • (as Wilfred Lawson)
    May Britt
    May Britt
    • Sonia Rostovaas Sonia Rostova
    Jeremy Brett
    Jeremy Brett
    • Nikolai Rostovas Nikolai Rostov
    Patrick Crean
    • Denisovas Denisov
    Sean Barrett
    • Petya Rostovas Petya Rostov
    • Director
      • King Vidor
    • Writers
      • Lev Tolstoy(based on the novel by)
      • Bridget Boland(adaptation)
      • Robert Westerby(adaptation)
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
    • All cast & crew

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    Storyline

    Edit
    By 1812, Napoleon's (Herbert Lom's) forces controlled much of Europe. Russia, one of the few countries still unconquered, prepares to face Napoleon's troops together with Austria. Amongst the Russian soldiers, are Count Nikolai Rostov (Jeremy Brett) and Prince Andrei Bolkonsky (Mel Ferrer). Count Pierre Bezukhov (Henry Fonda), a friend of Andrei's, and self-styled intellectual, who is not interested in fighting. Pierre's life changes when his father dies, leaving him a vast inheritance. He is attracted to Natasha Rostov (Audrey Hepburn), Nikolai's sister, but she is too young, so he gives in to baser desires and marries the shallow, manipulative Princess Helene (Anita Ekberg). The marriage ends when Pierre discovers his wife's true nature. Andrei is captured and later released by the French, and returns home only to watch his wife die in childbirth. A few months later, Pierre and Andrei meet again. Andrei sees Natasha and falls in love, but his father will only permit the marriage if they postpone it for one year until Natasha turns seventeen. While Andrei is away on a military mission, Natasha is drawn to Anatole Kuragin (Vittorio Gassman), a womanizer. Pierre saves Natasha by telling her of Anatole's past before she can elope with him. Napoleon invades Russia. Pierre visits Andrei on the eve of the battle, and observes the battle that follows. Traumatized by the carnage, he vows to kill Napoleon. —alfiehitchie
    • napoleonic war
    • french invasion of russia
    • epic
    • year 1812
    • year 1805
    • 67 more
    • Plot summary
    • Add synopsis
    • Taglines
      • The Greatest Novel Ever Written ... Now Magnificently Alive On The Screen!
    • Genres
      • Drama
      • Romance
      • War
    • Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)
      • Rated PG for violence
    • Parents guide

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Henry Fonda later admitted he had known from the beginning that he was too old for his character, and had only made this movie for the money.
    • Goofs
      The marching band in the opening parade are all playing modern musical instruments.
    • Quotes

      Natasha Rostov: When I finally say I love you to any man and really mean it, it will be like a defeated general who's lost all his troops, surrendering and handing his sword to the enemy.

    • Crazy credits
      Closing credits epilogue: The most difficult thing - but an essential one - is to love Life, to love it even while one suffers, because Life is all. Life is God, and to love Life means to love God. Tolstoy "WAR and PEACE"
    • Alternate versions
      Two different versions of the main titles exists. Both of them in English. In the one, the credits are set against a neutral background, in the other against details of a painting of Napoleon in front of his troops.
    • Connections
      Edited into Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)
    • Soundtracks
      Grande Valse Brillante
      (uncredited)

      by Frédéric Chopin (Waltz n°1 in E flat major)

    User reviews72

    Review
    Top review
    8/10
    "You can't hate something you don't know"
    If you want to bring such an vast, sweeping yet intensely human novel such as Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace to the screen with both its breadth and depth intact you can do either one of two of things. You can film it page-for-page, and make an eight-hour behemoth, as Sergei Bondarchuk did with the 1960s Russian production. Or, you can prune it down to something more manageable, excising whole characters and subplots, but recreating certain sections of Tolstoy's work more or less verbatim to preserve what is vital about his work. This latter is the approach taken for Dino de Laurentiis's 1956 Italian-American co-production.

    The narrative here focuses mainly on just three of Tolstoy's characters – Pierre, Natasha and Alexei – portrayed by Henry Fonda, Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer respectively. Fonda is really too old to play the youthful Pierre, but he is not as severely miscast as some have said, pulling off the early scenes of Pierre as the gangly, drunken student with a fair degree of believability. Hepburn brilliantly handles the aging of her character, transforming the naïve teenager into a mature and confident woman while still maintaining the same core persona. If only something as complementary could be said of Mel Ferrer, who takes to acting the same way anvils take to floating. His appallingness is matched only by the woman who plays his wife, Milly Vitale. There are some decent supporting players though. Herbert Lom gives a surprisingly heartfelt performance as Napoleon. Oskar Homolka brilliantly plays the archetypal scruffy old general who's too high-ranking and experienced to bother with all that decorum business, his gestures forceful but with a half-hearted brevity to them. And John Mills is bizarrely like someone out of a Monty Python film.

    Director King Vidor was a veteran of old Hollywood and just the sort of director to handle the mix of big canvas and intimacy. He shows what must have been extraordinary patience in setting up hordes of extras, carts and cannons for authentic looking crowd scenes, but then makes them a briefly glimpsed backdrop, never really dwelling on the massive scope or showing it off for its own sake. This seemingly contradictory tack gives us a sense of the story happening in a real place, but never allows it to detract from the main players and their stories. Vidor is constantly implying things with the simplest of cinematic tricks, and this helps to make up for the gaps in plot that the adaptation necessitates. For example, when Hepburn and Vittorio Gassman kiss at the opera, the angle gradually changes to reveal the reflection of a door in a mirror. This subtle move plants the idea in our heads that someone may walk in on them, and it gives the moment a sense of unease and wrongness. Vidor's canny ability to suggest mood and temperament, particularly evident in his framing of the inner monologues during the dance scene, also helps to cover any deficit in the acting.

    At three-and-a-half hours, this is still quite a long old movie. And yet, thanks to some compelling imagery and strong narrative it moves faster than many a 90-minuter. Shorn of much of Tolstoy's original material as it is, it is still long enough to give us that feeling of the passage of time and development of character, to make Fonda's transition from a foppish lad in Western European attire to a bearded man in Russian garb feel like more than just a change of clothes. This version of War and Peace certainly has a fair few things wrong with it, yet still manages to be a lucid and passionate – if not entirely faithful – adaptation of a great work of literature.
    helpful•13
    0
    • Steffi_P
    • Sep 5, 2011

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • August 21, 1956 (United States)
    • Countries of origin
      • United States
      • Italy
    • Languages
      • English
      • Russian
    • Also known as
      • Krieg und Frieden
    • Filming locations
      • Cinecittà Studios, Cinecittà, Rome, Lazio, Italy
    • Production company
      • Ponti-De Laurentiis Cinematografica
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • $6,000,000 (estimated)
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      3 hours 28 minutes

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