War And Peace (1956)

War and Peace is a commendable attempt to boil down Tolstoy's long, diff icult novel into 208 minutes' screen time. In recreating the the social and personal upheavals attending Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia, $6 million was shelled out by coproducers Carlo Pon ti, Dino de Laurentiis and Paramount Pictures. Some of the panoramic battle sequences are so e xpertly handled by second-unit directo r Mario Soldati that they appear to be Technicolor-and-Vistavision newsreel footage of the actual events. Still, the film falters dr amatically, principally because of a lumpy s cript and King Vidor's surprisingly lustreless direction. In addition, t he casting is wi ldly consistent: for example, while Audrey Hepburn is f lawless as Natasha, Henry Fonda is far too "Yankeefied" as the introspec tive Pierre. Proving too long and unwieldy for most audiences, War and P eace died at the box office; far more successful was the epic, sc rupulo usly faithful 1968 version, filmed in the Soviet Union.