The story is faithful to Tolstoy's epic work, though there are serious omissions. Stripped down to its core, the plot has, as its backdrop, Russia's wars with France in 1805 and 1812. Aside from Pierre, an earnest young intellectual despite a bearish physique, the main characters are from three wealthy families.
The Bolkonskys include imperious, eccentric, and elderly Nikolai (Anatoli Ktorov); his gloomy and duty-bound son Andrei (Vyacheslav Tikhonov); and Andrei's plain, unhappy sister Maria (Antonina Shuranova). The Rostovs consist of good-natured father Ilya (Viktor Stanitsyn); his empathetic wife Natalya (Kira Golovko); older son Nikolai (Oleg Tabakov), an affable soldier; spirited and romantic daughter, Natasha (Lyudmila Saveleva); and eager-to-please youngest son Petya (Sergei Yermilov). The Kuragins are aging Prince Vasily (Boris Smirnov), a cynical and manipulating socialite; his daughter Helene (Irina Skobtseva), beautiful but ultimately malevolent; and Anatole (Vasiliy Lanovoy), an amoral hedonist in bad company.
Other noteworthy characters are the villainous Dolokhov (Oleg Efremov), from a humble family; and Sonya (Irina Gubanova), Natasha's virtuous cousin.
How others will see it. Problems await any director tasked with a film adaptation of "War and Peace." The novel is famous for its length, and any film of typical length (e.g. 110 minutes) will have to sacrifice both depth and story. The war scenes require a cast of thousands, or at least their CGI equivalent. This is costly.
Another difficulty is the casting. Those who have read the novel are familiar with the characters, and have in mind what they should look like. There isn't always a Hollywood A-list actor ideal for a given role.
Director Bondarchuk was fortunate in that the Soviet state supported his efforts. The Red Army was available for extras, national heritage sites were available for filming, and the rubles were aplenty to allow a fine production and a remarkably long running time.
In the Soviet Union, four films of normal length were released, over a three year period. In the West, there was just one movie, that joined the four Soviet films together and (in some cases) overdubbed the Russian dialogue with English. That film was greeted with interest, for its cost and length was a novelty sufficient to gain entry into the Guiness Book of World Records. But the dubbing and length made it a tough sit for most Western viewers, including some critics.
Nonetheless, the six-hour Western release of War and Peace won the prestigious Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. It also won in the same category at the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle. Such awards were unprecedented for a Soviet film. England, France, and Italy had dominated the lists of prior winners.
In the West, the film was a box office disappointment, though distribution rights were lucrative. In the Soviet Union, the movies did banner business, enough so to make the film a commercial success as well as a critical one.
Today, the four Soviet films have been restored and look magnificent. There is little reason, apart from curiosity, to see the dubbed six-hour version. I have not seen it.
Today at imdb.com, the four films are graded highly. For the four parts, the user ratings are respectively 8.2, 8.0, 8.3, and 8.2. The ratings drop slightly to 7.7 among women over 45, an independent demographic that may not want pretty young Natasha to be obligated to marry any of her suitors, particularly not the austere Prince Andrei. The film presents a male-centric world in which ladies wear dresses and attend balls but are otherwise idle.
The lowest user rating is for Part II, which stars Natasha and omits the scenes of war that frequent the other three parts. Generally, the user reviews praise the director's efforts and achievement. They are impressed with the film's length and purported cost (was it really more expensive to make than Cleopatra (1963)?
How I felt about it. Back to the Big Three challenges faced by any director of War and Peace. The combined running time for the four movies is seven hours. That can cover considerable ground, but not the entire scope of Leo Tolstoy's most celebrated novel. And that is even if you exclude the epilogue, a lengthy and unfilmable essay.
So, there are omissions. Princess Maria receives a marriage offer from Anatole Kuragin, and turns him down after she witnesses him seducing her companion Mademoiselle Bourienne. Nikolai Rostov loses his father's fortune in a marked card game to that scoundrel Dolokhov. The serfs rebel against Princess Maria. She marries Nikolai. The old Count Rostov dies. Denisov proposes to Natasha. None of this happens in the film. Most of the characters are downgraded in importance in the screenplay, with the exception of Prince Andrei, Natasha, and Pierre, who each get their own film, plus appearances in the others.
There was a miniseries adaptation of "War and Peace" by the BBC in 1972. It is almost 15 hours long, and although longer is generally better, it must also have omissions. What the novel really needs is the telenovel treatment, if Televisa could somehow be convinced to adhere to the novel instead of focusing on, and embellishing, Natasha's romantic triangles.
But the Soviet War and Peace is immensely preferable to Hollywood's A-list 1956 adaptation, which miscast Henry Fonda and Audrey Hepburn in the leading roles. It is said the Soviets commissioned their version in response to the Hollywood movie, though the ten-year gap says otherwise.
But the problem of casting would bedevil any director. In the Bondarchuk film, Dolokhov looks too much like Harpo Marx. Pierre is too old and too small (the Tolstoy character could drive nails into walls with his bare hand). Old Prince Bolkonsky should be shrill, even frightening. Helene should be younger and more attractive. Count Ilya Rostov is too old for his role. And so on.
Leo Tolstoy's magnificent prose does not lend itself to dialogue. And it can't be replaced by dialogue. It requires an aloof narrator, as in Barry Lyndon (1975) but more often. Bondarchuk does use narration, and it is effective. But the film could use more of it.
Nonetheless, Bondarchuk comes as close as anyone to achieving the impossible; a film adaptation of "War and Peace" that is as great as its source novel. The cinematography is wonderful, even the many shots of clouds and landscapes filmed from helicopters. The costumes are splendid, the sets are lavish, and the war scenes have all the exploding cannons and myriad soldiers requisite for such scenes. Bondarchuk is equally adept filming nature, war, balls, or intimate conversations.
I have read the source novel at least twice. I hadn't realized before that Pierre is immortal. He shoots Dolokhov in a duel, participates in the Battle of Borodino, is arrested by the French occupiers, and participates in the Napoleonic Moscow retreat equivalent of the Bataan Death March. Does Pierre do these foolish things because he knows he can't be killed? After all, he is fictional.
One aspect of the four films that can't be neglected is their propaganda content. Platon Karataev is one minor character that gets his due, as the good and cheerful soldier who doesn't care that is he imprisoned and will likely soon die. General Kutuzov may be old, blind, and corpulent, but he is always playing three dimensional chess. He is also always right, and wants to be sure we know it. The French occupiers plunder the Russians, burn down Moscow, and are arrogant warmongers.