Ever wanted to see what a billion dollar movie would look like? Not in today’s billions, where a CGI-laden comic book pic costs up to a quarter bill. No, a billion bucks back when a billion really was a billion. Made in the high-flying days of Breznev’s Soviet Union, there’s no way of knowing just what this USSR-approved version of the Tolstoy novel cost. The rumored figure was $100,000,000 (a later claim was only ten mill), but even Hollywood bookkeeping could never top the account ledger shenanigans of a Kremlin cultural slush-fund. Initially shown in an 8 hour cut, it’s now weighs 6 & ½ and boasts a cast in the tens of thousands. (That’s an entire Russian Army on the home team and a second Russian Army dressed as the invading French.) Plus endless ballrooms, Moscow mansions, country estates, 70mm SovColor, endless speaking roles, gowns, cannons . . . and precious little modern fakery. It’s an amazing physical achievement . . . but is it any good? Well , er . . . Nyet. They gave the project to Sergei Bondarchuk, a politically acceptable hack of modest talent who knew how to play the government funding game. And he also took on the leading role of Pierre, that sadly romantic, illegitimate intellectual manqué. (It’s as if President Bill Clinton gave Rob Reiner a couple of billion in the ‘90s to make MOBY DICK and Reiner not only directed but also played the whale.) Bondarchuk must have been doing the festival circuit at the time as the film is a stylistic magpie of up-to-the-minute, if misused techniques. With lots of big, juicy Russian declarative acting, Prince Andrei a sort of Darcy a la Jane Austen, and an insufferably jejune Natasha who at least grows on you once she stops trying to outdo Audrey Hepburn.* But once you get past the fine costumes & art direction, only composer Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov’s stunningly effective score seems Tolstoy-worthy. The film both a must-see, and a miss. WARNING: The 5-DVD edition on RusCICO/Image gives a decent idea of the film, but an older 3-DVD set on Kultur (a tv sourced PAL conversion?) is a savagely cropped, visually smeared travesty.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: *Speaking of Audrey . . . she makes an enchanting Natasha in King Vidor’s 1956 version. And in about half the running time, you get almost as much of the story as you get here. Lots of good things in the film, but what were they thinking when they got Henry Fonda as Pierre? Especially when Peter Ustinov, born to play the role, was available, even working for Paramount who released the film. Those who’d like to get almost all of the story without picking up the book might check out the 20 episode BBC version with Anthony Hopkins as Pierre. It’s horribly compromised by its budget, but if you can adjust, worth seeing.
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