As with most literary adaptations, it is fundamentally pointless to speculate on the extent to which King Vidor's memorable movie either departs from or reproduces the themes and style of Tolstoy's source- text. Film and literature are fundamentally different media and should be treated as such.
What is perhaps more suggestive is to look at this version of WAR AND PEACE in its context of production. Napoleon (Herbert Lom) has the desire to invade Russia and hence expand the scope and range of the French Empire, just like Hitler had imagined fifteen years before the film's release. Initial success was followed by ultimate failure, as the Russians, spearheaded in the film by Field Marshal Kutzorov (Oscar Homolka), fight a war of attrition, eschewing direct combat in favor of occasional guerrilla raids. Napoleon cannot understand his opponents' behavior: no one will come to sign an official surrender. Eventually he is forced to withdraw, and his troops have to complete a 3000+ kilometer journey out of Russia while enduring the exigencies of winter. With little or no capacity for resistance, they are easily overrun by Dolokhov (Helmut Dantine) and his forces. Vidor's film offers a powerful denunciation of dictators, who are often so crazed with ambition that they have little or no concern either for military logistics or for the welfare of their forces. Napoloeon, like Hitler, gets what he deserves.
Yet WAR AND PEACE is equally critical of the Russian side. Natasha Rostova (Audrey Hepburn) inhabits a bourgeois society where outward show matters: as in many latter-day Austen adaptations, most members of her class spend their time trying to see and be seen at balls. Vidor includes several dance-sequences that might be pretty to look at, but suggest the trivialities of the Russian world; even though the French army are drawing nearer and nearer, no one seems to be taking any notice. Eventually her lover Prince Andrei Bolkonsky (Mel Ferrer) is sent away to the front and discovers the realities of life. Natasha has a brief fling with another man, but comes to discover the realities of life when she and her family are forced to evacuate Moscow to avoid being annihilated.
The film contains some spectacular battle-sequences, no more so when the French and Russian forces meet, and Pierre Bezukhov (Henry Fonda) tours the Russian battle-lines and discovers to his cost just how hellish the world of combat can be. Having been taken prisoner by the French, he is marched back to France with the departing forces, where he meets a fellow-prisoner Platon Karataev (John Mills) and discovers a way to survive even in a world seemingly crashing to destruction around him.
WAR AND PEACE contains a happy ending of sorts, as Pierre and Natasha reunite after several years apart, but the scene of utter destruction facing them makes it a Pyrrhic happiness. The only way they can survive - as the film reminds us in a title-card taken from Tolstoy's novel - is to love life itself, and accept all that it can throw at us with equanimity. This might have seemed a rather optimistic message during the mid-Fifties, at a time when US-Soviet relations were lukewarm, to say the least, but it still holds sway today.
Vidor's film is extremely long, but sustains our attention throughout. Definitely worth watching if time and attention permit.
What is perhaps more suggestive is to look at this version of WAR AND PEACE in its context of production. Napoleon (Herbert Lom) has the desire to invade Russia and hence expand the scope and range of the French Empire, just like Hitler had imagined fifteen years before the film's release. Initial success was followed by ultimate failure, as the Russians, spearheaded in the film by Field Marshal Kutzorov (Oscar Homolka), fight a war of attrition, eschewing direct combat in favor of occasional guerrilla raids. Napoleon cannot understand his opponents' behavior: no one will come to sign an official surrender. Eventually he is forced to withdraw, and his troops have to complete a 3000+ kilometer journey out of Russia while enduring the exigencies of winter. With little or no capacity for resistance, they are easily overrun by Dolokhov (Helmut Dantine) and his forces. Vidor's film offers a powerful denunciation of dictators, who are often so crazed with ambition that they have little or no concern either for military logistics or for the welfare of their forces. Napoloeon, like Hitler, gets what he deserves.
Yet WAR AND PEACE is equally critical of the Russian side. Natasha Rostova (Audrey Hepburn) inhabits a bourgeois society where outward show matters: as in many latter-day Austen adaptations, most members of her class spend their time trying to see and be seen at balls. Vidor includes several dance-sequences that might be pretty to look at, but suggest the trivialities of the Russian world; even though the French army are drawing nearer and nearer, no one seems to be taking any notice. Eventually her lover Prince Andrei Bolkonsky (Mel Ferrer) is sent away to the front and discovers the realities of life. Natasha has a brief fling with another man, but comes to discover the realities of life when she and her family are forced to evacuate Moscow to avoid being annihilated.
The film contains some spectacular battle-sequences, no more so when the French and Russian forces meet, and Pierre Bezukhov (Henry Fonda) tours the Russian battle-lines and discovers to his cost just how hellish the world of combat can be. Having been taken prisoner by the French, he is marched back to France with the departing forces, where he meets a fellow-prisoner Platon Karataev (John Mills) and discovers a way to survive even in a world seemingly crashing to destruction around him.
WAR AND PEACE contains a happy ending of sorts, as Pierre and Natasha reunite after several years apart, but the scene of utter destruction facing them makes it a Pyrrhic happiness. The only way they can survive - as the film reminds us in a title-card taken from Tolstoy's novel - is to love life itself, and accept all that it can throw at us with equanimity. This might have seemed a rather optimistic message during the mid-Fifties, at a time when US-Soviet relations were lukewarm, to say the least, but it still holds sway today.
Vidor's film is extremely long, but sustains our attention throughout. Definitely worth watching if time and attention permit.