983 War and Peace

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Roscoe
Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2014 3:40 pm
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Re: 983 War and Peace

#151 Post by Roscoe » Mon Jul 22, 2019 9:50 am

Ungowa! Bondarchuk lousy director. Big Sets. Big Fight Scene. Zero Characters. Big Disappoint. Bad film.

Fortisquince
Joined: Tue Dec 29, 2009 6:11 pm

Re: 983 War and Peace

#152 Post by Fortisquince » Thu Jul 25, 2019 11:50 am

I've read War & Peace three times, including once in Russian, and Tolstoy is my favorite writer. I would say that Bondarchuk tries to do right by Tolstoy, but doesn't hit the mark. He does try hard with several of Tolstoy's indelible moments - the tree, Natasha's voice bringing Andrei back to life, and the sky at Austerlitz - but overall the film's tone is mostly that of a typical costume drama. The type of film skewered by The Favourite. And the casting really doesn't help. If I remember correctly, the characters of Pierre and Andrei are in their mid 20's or so when Tolstoy's book begins and about 10 years older by its end. In the film, Andrei looks to be in his late 30s or early 40s and the actor who plays Pierre appears to be in his mid 40s. And as for Natasha, well, in the book, she's probably about 14 when it starts, but in the film the actress who plays her is in her early 20s, yet plays the part as if she were 12 years old. So, yeah, the casting is not great, imo, but the film is not a complete disaster by any means. But definitely read the book. So intimate, but so epic.

videozor
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Re: 983 War and Peace

#153 Post by videozor » Thu Jul 25, 2019 12:43 pm

"Actor who plays Pierre" is Bondarchuk himself. Smoktunovski was interested in that part, but the director offered him Andre instead. Smoktunovski opted for Hamlet. Bondarchuk could not resist casting his wife as Helene as well. She also looked as 50 years old. Others except Efremov as Dolokhov are acceptable or even better than that. The first two parts follow the book pretty closely, but are not anything but animated illustrations. Main liberty taken by filmmakers is Part 3 - complete opposite to Tolstoy's idea how a war should be depicted. Tolstoy was an admirer of how Stendhal showed Waterlooo in Charterhouse of Parma. What the movie offers as Borodino is closer to Hugo's recreation of Waterloo. By the time the Part 4 was shown, both public and filmmakers looked tired of the movie. The film ends abrabtly, in the way very similar to Vidor's version. The book follows characters till early 1820s, finding Pierre future Decemberist, Nicolas as reactionary and Natasha completely loosing her youthful charm...

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knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: 983 War and Peace

#154 Post by knives » Thu Jul 25, 2019 4:09 pm

The overlap with the Vidor is intentional and was planned from the beginning. The filmmakers admitted to using Vidor as a blueprint.

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domino harvey
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Re: 983 War and Peace

#155 Post by domino harvey » Thu Jul 25, 2019 4:14 pm

I liked this thread better when people liked the movie

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knives
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Re: 983 War and Peace

#156 Post by knives » Thu Jul 25, 2019 4:20 pm

Out 1's revenge?

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: 983 War and Peace

#157 Post by Michael Kerpan » Fri Jul 26, 2019 11:44 pm

Made it to the end. Thanks to Criterion Channel. No need to buy the Blu-Ray (or watch this ever again). But I do need to find a copy of the book that's not falling apart (like my wife's heavily marked up copy from 45+ years ago).

alexrinse
Joined: Sun Mar 31, 2019 8:07 pm

Re: 983 War and Peace

#158 Post by alexrinse » Tue Aug 20, 2019 2:57 pm

P.S.: Mosfilm also seems to have uploaded a new resto of Elem Klimov's Come and See, which has also been another long sought-after Holy Grail.
It's being released at Cinema Ideal in Lisbon on 29th of August

Dutch bd on 24th September

It's finally happening, it seems.

alexrinse
Joined: Sun Mar 31, 2019 8:07 pm

Re: 983 War and Peace

#159 Post by alexrinse » Tue Aug 20, 2019 3:02 pm


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zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

Re: 983 War and Peace

#160 Post by zedz » Sun Nov 17, 2019 11:12 pm

I worked my way through this on the weekend and ended up ambivalent. Much of the film is tremendously impressive, and I was surprised by how experimental a lot of it was, but it was balanced by almost as much clunkinesss. Some of it was conventional costume drama clunkiness, and some of it was the clunkiness of interesting formal ideas clumsily executed - or just not working, full stop. The competing modes gave the entire film a feeling of inconsistency for me: lots and lots of technique, but little coherent style. It makes for an odd adaptation, as you can see Bondarchuk striving over and over again for fidelity to specific events or narrative devices of the novel, but without Tolstoy's suppleness the effect is very different.

As others have noted, the casting is problematic, and the calibration of the disparate performances even more so, but the biggest fail is Natasha. Scene by scene, Ludmila Savelyeva is mostly bad, and over all completely inadequate.

There are, on the upside, lots of stylistic risks that pay off, particularly in the action scenes, and even a number of the ones that don't (e.g. the almost subliminal spangles on each cut of Kuragin's seduction dance) are worth trying once. It's certainly a much more rewarding viewing experience that Vidor's stifling bore.

The period extras are samey or trite, but the interview with Denise Youngblood is superb, one of the best of the year. I know Tarkovsky detested Bondarchuk, but I'd always put that down to Tarkovsky being a drama queen. Turns out that everybody detested him, and the Arctic chill that accompanies cinematographer Anatoly Petritsky's reminiscences is unmistakable. (It also seems that a lot of the film's visual splendour and invention can be credited to Petritsky, which might also explain why the Battle of Borodino is so much more expressively filmed that Austerlitz.)

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knives
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Re: 983 War and Peace

#161 Post by knives » Sun Apr 19, 2020 9:58 pm

What an incredible film. Just in terms of its sense of expanse it brings a genuine awe. There is fortunately more to the film then its explosions though those are compelling on their own. Bondarchuk claims the Vidor adaptation as the skeleton he expanded his adaptation from and especially early that's incredibly clear (and not just because Saveleva is a dead ringer for Audrey Hepburn), though the most interesting potential influence is Minnelli's Madame Bovary. Like that film this one uses set pieces as microcosms of the themes of the episode with a tendency to shake one up on an understanding of character relations and traits through a fully physical expression. The film at times could easily play as a silent movie though its dialogue is fairly interesting.

I'm assuming all of the narration is directly from the book though the effect in cinema is much more disorientating. The dubbing over of French makes the film seem much more subjective as if we were hearing the characters' translations with running commentary of the conversations, but their actual narration did the opposite forcing me to look at them as characters and judge their statements against the visuals. It's a fascinating use of a rather simple technique and more effective then Malick's similar voice over technique.

There's a few structural things that really interest me with this. Vidor's masterpiece is the only experience I've had with the book and in that Pierre's awakening in the prison at the end felt like it was given more time (relative to the total) and was a key reason for Vidor's film. It's a relative blip here taking up less than an hour. I think on average I prefer this rendition, but I wish it had used the ending Vidor gave them more powerfully.

davidhuxley
Joined: Thu Jul 14, 2016 6:56 pm

Re: 983 War and Peace

#162 Post by davidhuxley » Fri Dec 31, 2021 5:17 pm

Does anyone have a copy of a purported Second Printing of this title that is region free? If so, what is the year stated as the second printing, and can you recall the approximate month in which you purchased it? Thanks.

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