This is one real grand old fashioned epic movie, in basically every way imaginable. But how many people have actually ever heard or watched this movie? Surprisingly not nearly as much as it's deserving. It of course also has to do with the fact that this movie was made at the time of the cold war, so this movie wasn't largely viewed or available in the West. And of course its extreme long running time is also an element that prevents lots of people from watching this.

Yes, you can view the movie in parts, since each part of the movie forms a new different 'chapter' (Chapter I: Andrey Bolkonskiy, chapter II: Natasha Rostova, chapter III: 1812 god, chapter IV: Pierre Bezukhov) of the story, focusing on another character, in either war or peace but its of course best and most effective to watch this movie as one whole. After all the chapters and characters are of course all connected. There are a couple of characters that appear- and connect the 4 stories. The chapter themselves also aren't at all times chronological with each other and its rather 4 different tellings and different point-of-views, each of them providing more in depth of the story and characters. Each chapter has of course its own qualities and some are more appealing than others for certain people. And even though the movie its running time is over 7 hours, it still is a movie that moves along just fine. Despite not having the most fast pace, it never drags.

It's especially the contrast between the war and peace situations that makes the movie so epic and powerful in what it tries to achieve. Each chapter focuses on a different either war or peace situation. I think Tolstoy himself would had been pleased with this adaption of his novel.

It's probably one of the, if not the, most expensive movie ever made but that's hard to really say because of the inflation. So it can't be really said how much this movie cost to make with today's money. The movie not in the least also was so expensive because it took years to make it. It was good to see that they didn't just only put all in the money in the battle sequences of the movie but also obviously in the overall look of the movie. The movie features some amazing large detailed sets and good, detailed, authentic looking costumes. But it of course are still the battle sequences that will impress the most. It will blow your mind. Ten-thousands of extra's were used during the big battle sequences. I keep saying this but it's always more impressive to see an extreme number of real humans charging than it is to watch a grand CGI-battle, no matter how realistic and impressive it all looks.

What I also liked during the battles was that it in parts used the same style as '20's and '30's Russian genre movies, in its camera-work and style of editing mostly. No doubt an homage to the good old golden days of Russian cinema. But the movie overall also uses a great and unique unusual style at times. It uses lots of tricks in parts, such as split-screens and extreme fast editing, to often give the movie an unique and sort of surreal feeling. The movie would often also feature some extreme long shots, in which the camera moves all the way through the ballrooms or other rooms in the palaces or over the battlefield.

The acting in the movie is also surprisingly great, as far as I'm able to judge that. I mean it's also hard to really judge the acting quality in a movie in a language that you don't speak or understand for yourself. Seemed to me that most of the actors in this movie are normally stage actors, which was a good and suiting acting style for this, of course sort of overblown, movie. The movie of course features a whole lot of characters but they all get the right required treatment and are deepened out. The long running time of course allowed this all to be possible. No way this movie would had worked out as good as it was just 'merely' a 3 hour epic.

I think the fact that the movie won an Oscar for best foreign film, despite of the cold war at the time, shows how brilliant the movie is.

10/10

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This Russian version is not going to appeal to everybody, it is incredibly long to the extent that viewing the whole film in one sitting is unlikely to happen for most and non-Russian speakers who are not familiar with the story will find themselves confused as to what's going on. For this viewer though, apart from some over-histrionic acting in places including from Sergei Bondarchuk's Pierre, the film was a towering achievement and the best version of Tolstoy's masterpiece alongside the 1972 mini-series.

War and Peace (1966) is a visual stunner, the scenery and period detail is spectacular and gives a sense of time and place far better than any other version of War and Peace and the cinematography is inventive and enough to take the breath away. The film and visuals especially stood out in the ballroom scenes, which were gorgeously romantic and on par with those of Visconti's The Leopard, and in the enormous in scope and incredibly gut-wrenching battle scenes, aided even further by the chilling music score. The duel is similarly unforgettable and is quite heart-wrenching. The music was another asset that worked phenomenally, the mix of songs, marches, chants and waltzes made for not only music that was emotionally powerful and beautiful to listen to but also gave a sense that the story was set in Russia in the way that few of the other versions managed to achieve, even Nino Rota's truly excellent score for the 1956 film. The music score fits amazingly and is a large part as to why the battle scenes are so memorable.

The script is rich in detail, thoughtful and mostly true to Tolstoy's style (if lacking though in the savage satirical bite that Tolstoy sometimes adopts, making the tone a touch sullen),though those unfamiliar with the story or the Russian language are likely to find themselves easily themselves, especially with the English-edited dubbed version being as poorly done as it is. The story makes the most of its length, so that the nearly seven hour length doesn't feel overlong (which it was never going to be, War and Peace needs a long length to do the story justice). Fans of the book will be thrilled to find as many of the key scenes, themes and characters kept intact as much as possible and with the full impact they should do, the film wisely doesn't spend too long on the human drama scenes and paces them tightly, giving them genuine poignancy. Characters are compellingly real, even potential caricatures such as Napoleon and Kutuzov, and Bondarchuk's direction is remarkable, his task was monumental and he succeeded in making it completely fascinating. And despite what I said before about the acting, most of it works fine with a lot of living the drama in alternative to just acting it.

In conclusion, one of the best versions of War and Peace and a flawed but towering achievement. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Visually, this is perhaps the most stunning film I have ever seen. This incredibly long picture featured the Soviet military as extras and it appears that EVERY soldier in the USSR participated in this film! I once read that they ONLY used about 10,000 and if so, this still dwarfs Hollywood's best efforts. It's hard to imagine the incredible battle scenes as seen from above--you just have to see it to take it all in. I'm only sorry I never saw it on the big screen--having seen it when it was first aired on American TV around 1970 and again about a year ago on video.

The problem with the picture is that although it is stunning, it also features the artistic sensibilities that Russians are often known for having. To the average viewer, these will sometimes seem very odd or incomplete! Let me give you an example: when one of our Russian heroes has a bomb land in front of him, instead of exploding and killing him, the camera speed slows to a crawl and this death sequence takes a very long time. When it does explode, we are given a closeup of his eye as he contemplates his own death and eternity. It's oddly poetic but still VERY odd. Also, I found the relationships between the characters and the dialog to be rather stilted and poor--like there must have been something missing.

Now not all of this may be the fault of the Russian film crew, as there are apparently MANY different versions of the film floating around out there. In the US, it was released at about 6 1/2 hours, in Italy only a little over 4 hours and in Russia 8 1/2 plus! You wonder if SOME of the context for some of these odd sequences is just missing--fallen victim to an over-zealous editor.

However, overall I still recommend it but only to those who are willing to watch an incredibly long and strange movie. I liked it am am glad I got to see the amazing spectacle, but I won't be watching it again--twice is enough!