TRAILER:
https://youtu.be/3DqanxfecIA
“Good critics avoid hyperbole as a rule, and declaring a single film to be the greatest ever made makes a professional sound like an undergrad who just saw Citizen Kane for the first time. And even some voracious readers are guilty of seeing the writings of Leo Tolstoy as an essential chore. Having said all that: In any serious, sober-minded discussion about what could be selected to exemplify the farthest reaches of cinema’s capabilities, War and Peace — Sergei Bondarchuk’s largely unseen adaptation of Tolstoy’s literary classic — would have to be on the table.
The story of its production, of a man moving heaven and Earth to realize a staggering vision, boggles the mind to this day. The adaptation set a new standard for “epic,” capturing all the passion and tragedy of Napoleon’s clash against the Russian aristocracy in its seven-hour sprawl. Anyone who hears “431 minutes of War and Peace” and imagines an airless museum exhibit passing itself off as a film has another thing coming.
The film’s larger-than-life legend begins in 1961, when Bondarchuk commandeered the largest budget the USSR had ever seen for a single motion picture. Released in four parts in 1966 and 1967, it was a colossal success in its original homeland run as well as a worldwide sensation, and playing as a four-night special on ABC in 1972 after having set a new record for highest ticket cost — as steep as $7.50, the equivalent of dropping $56.52 on a ticket today, and a big step up from the $1.20 rate in place at the time — during theatrical screenings of an abridged six-hour edit in the US. The 1966 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film was just the feather in its cap — er, shako.
But the difficulty of preserving, displaying, and distributing such a massive piece of work (a whopping 20 canisters of film reels made transportation a sizable hassle) all but sealed it away from the public’s access, excepting the occasional repertory run of a badly beaten-up copy. Until now.
The good folks at Janus Films have undertaken the herculean work of rebeautifying Bondarchuk’s footage, and in 2019, they’re getting it back out there: First, a run at New York’s Film Society of Lincoln Center starting Friday, then a run in Los Angeles, other major cities, and finally, a video/digital release later in the year.”
- Charles Bromesco, VOX
The greatest Soviet film director after Sergei Eisenstein. Don’t know how Bondarchuk pulled it off.
He suffered two heart attacks helming War and Peace. The stress of bringing Tolstoy’s vision to the big screen nearly killed him.
Its a work of art and a true cinematic masterpiece. The Criterion Collection restoration lives up to its billing.
I hear the trailer is around 90 minutes......