For probably most people, if asked to recite a line from the Martin Scorsese film Goodfellas, the one you’re most likely hear is “From as far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.” Admit it, you read that with Ray Liotta’s grumble in your head. As my parents, and now my wife, will confirm, I go on “kicks” with historical figures. Some might call it manias or obsessions. I prefer the term “fever,” because it will inevitably pass. The subjects of my “fevers” are not always the most worthy morally correct choices. But for some reason, I get possessed by them, and for however long that lasts, I’m reading everything I can, collecting memorabilia, and basically boring all conversation by injecting them into it….no matter how much of stretch it is. For example, “Speaking of the Yankees, did you know that in 1066….” Off the top of my head, those manias have included (but not limited to): the Norman Conquest; the Soviet Union from the Russian Revolution through World War II (aka, the Stalin years); aviation of World War I; Casey Stengel; Christy Mathewson; Frank Sinatra; and any number of World War II figures. The list goes on. Unlike Henry Hill, the protagonist/narrator of Goodfellas, I don’t stay fixated on topic for long. No, like my literary counterpart, the amphibious rake Mr. Toad of Wind in the Willows, these obsessions only last till something else catches my eye. The grass is always greener in some other part of history.
But if you asked me who was the first historical figure to grab hold of my imagination and thoroughly control it, it’s one who proves size doesn’t really matter when it comes to obsession. I am, of course, speaking of….
Vive L’Empereur!
Napoleon Bonaparte himself….who, for the record, really wasn’t that short. That was all British propaganda. He wasn’t tall, but probably was around 5’6″….hey that’s about my height! Coincidence, I am sure. It all came about from a co-worker of my Father’s, who was a Francophile. Why I latched onto to the Corsican, I really can’t recall. All I know is, when I was in elementary school, when my classmates were learning to hit off a tee or throw a football, my mind was filled with places like Jena, Friedland and Austerlitz. Let other boys know sports starts (I would, for the record, later on make up for lost time there…and then some). I was the one who could rattle off Michel Ney, Joachim Murat, and Talleyrand. My Father’s acquaintance even gifted me a biography of Napoleon’s life. It was in French, so I’ve never really read it….but I liked the pictures. And speaking of that, I even had a print of one of David’s portraits of Napoleon. I think it was the famed (and entirely fictitious) one of Napoleon crossing the Alps. That stayed with me all the way through college. It’s parting, at the final house party of my undergraduate career, is an event perhaps best summed up in an entirely different writing exercise. Let it suffice, I’ll always have a soft spot for La Marseillaise.
Well, as the years went by, I found other fascinations. But just as you don’t forget your first love or the first time you rode a bicycle, Napoleon always occupied a certain niche in my mind. Call it the Saint Helena of my subconscious, if you will. I never fully launched into Napoleon-mania again, but whenever his name was mentioned or I came upon him in some form, it possessed some degree of resonance. The most obvious example was Napoleon’s encounter with late ’80s Southern California by way of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. While I loved the movie as much as any high schooler at the time did, I’m not going to lie if I didn’t say that I felt the Emperor deserved better representation. God forbid if my peers thought of the man who conquered most of continental Europe only in terms of devouring the Ziggy Piggy!
An ice cream sundae was as much a foil to Napoleon as the Russians were at Austerlitz
Perhaps the biggest manifestation of my childhood Napoleon fascination (I’m going to try and avoid calling it a “complex”, but you can, if you prefer) was taking on Leo Tolstoy’s “novel”, War and Peace. My first attempt came in high school…but it lasted probably not even as third as long as Napoleon’s famed 100 day campaign. I think it might’ve been sophomore English (maybe senior…I don’t remember. I had the same teacher both years). You had to do a monthly book report, making selections from a list. But….if you chose an especially long book, you only had to do a report bi-monthly. So I took on War and Peace because, of course, it had Napoleon. I remember my Mother drew up a wonderful plan of how, if I read a certain number of pages a day, I could get the job done. It was a perfect plan, it should have worked, it was Austerlitz in its perfection…..but then I got interested in baseball and there went that schedule. But I wasn’t going to concede defeat permanently. At some point, I was given my own paperback copy of War and Peace. This has to be sometime around my senior year of high school, because I remember reading it on the airplane when my Father and I went to the Midwest to look at colleges. I didn’t finish it then, though. I must’ve taken a year or two off, because at some point, I deviated into Herman Wouk’s World War II take on the Tolstoy model, Winds of War and War and Remembrance. But finish War and Peace I did, some time around 1993. It was definitely while living off campus during my undergrad years.
And it’s a tribute to Tolstoy how much of it I still remember. Not everything, mind you, and almost none of the dialogue. But certain characters stay with you, and scenarios as well. Pierre Bezukhov has always remained in my consciousness. I don’t remember everything that happened to him; just that he was an intellectual, he was a carouser, he came from the aristocracy, he finds himself lost in society, and that he remains in Moscow when the French arrive. I remember the character Andrei Bolkonsky, serving as an officer, and being found wounded by Napoleon himself on the field after Austerlitz. I recalled the depictions of Russian high society, because it seemed so strange that French was the language of choice. The battle sequences stood out, especially the scene of Napoleon observing the Battle of Borodino, not understanding why the strategies that had worked so brilliantly for years before were now not succeeding. And I remember Tolstoy’s explanations, of how Napoleon’s time on the world stage was done, that History was moving beyond him. It wasn’t Kutuzov that defeated Napoleon, it was History itself. Likewise, when time came for the French Grand Armee to leave Moscow, Tolstoy told us, it just didn’t exist anymore. The Army’s structure had broken down in Moscow. As an admitted admirer of individuals, Tolstoy’s explanation isn’t one I always find agreeable. Call me a follower of Victor Davis Hanson, rather than Jared Diamond. But I can’t deny, Tolstoy’s explanation stayed with me, long after I forgot pretty much everything about Natasha Rostov.
At Borodino. Why isn’t this working?!!!
Now, as I mentioned, there was a piece of my mind that, despite the passing of years, always felt something for Napoleon. I wouldn’t call it respect or admiration….maybe just curiosity. And so, maybe 5 years ago, when at a used book store in Concord, MA, I came across Frank McLynn’s 1997 biography of Bonaparte, I knew I had to have it. I bought that and Samuel Eliot Morrison’s biography of Christopher Columbus because….frankly, between the Admiral of the Ocean Sea and the Emperor of France, I just didn’t know too much about either. But don’t get thinking I immediately started walking around with m hand in my breast pocket. McLynn’s Napoleon: a Biography promptly took an exalted spot in our library. And stayed there. And stayed there. And remained there, much like its subject, housed somewhere in that massive sarcophagus in Les Invalides; a Napoleon to be admired from afar, but not be engaged with.
I must tell you, we have a lot of books in our library. And it keeps growing. Western MA has no shortage of used books retailers, and when the League of Women Voters has their annual sale, our library always expands exponentially. So far, we haven’t run out of space, but I don’t doubt that day is coming. Well anyway, the amount of books we have in our house keeps growing…and yet, I kept checking out books from the campus library. Jennifer (my wife), in her proper judgment, drew my attention to this habit, and so, I have since taken it upon myself to read only that which comes from our own library, instead of going to a public one. At my current reading rate, combined with the amount of books we have, you probably won’t see me in a library for about another 17 years….at least. That is, unless it’s the coffee shop on the first floor of the W.E.B. DuBois Library. There you will definitely find me. But I digress…
Like the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, just waiting its time
Our home library has the fiction and non-fiction separated, with further separations for poetry, drama, art books, and text books. So if I was going to devote my reading to all that resides in the basement….err, study of 7 Laurel Lane, then I needed a system that gives equal opportunity to all we posses. And that system is alternating fiction and non-fiction. I don’t really go beyond that….whatever fiction books piques my interest, and then a nonfiction that (sometimes) compliments that. For example, when I recently read and loved Treasure Island, I followed that up with Peter Earle’s history of seafaring buccaneers, The Pirate Wars. And so, when my most recent fiction was Mr. Midshipman Hornblower (which I also really enjoyed), it made sense that the time had come to dive into Napoleon. After all, Horatio Hornblower is an officer in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic War. Isn’t it about time I knew the full story of the man responsible for all those conflicts?
And that’s when the randomness of the Universe sometimes just doesn’t seem so random. For just as Tolstoy tells us History had decided when Napoleon’s time was done, so too did someone from afar seem to deem the present as my own, personal Napoleonic Renaissance. Mind you, I haven’t gotten too far in McLynn’s biography; the subject isn’t even Emperor yet. He’s only just convinced other to have him named First Consul for Life. We’re a long ways away from the burning of Moscow in 1812. But that’s not the way life works. In a perfect world, this would have all happened when I got to that chapter. In this world, at the same time that my eyes read of Napoleon’s victory at Marengo, they also beheld an e-mail from the Amherst Cinema. Playing 1 week only, a four-part Soviet version of War and Peace. Just as war with Britain came too early for Napoleon in 1803, so did this.
So here’s the thing about War and Peace: I think it pretty much set a standard for Russian authors to follow. I’ve read three books from 20th century Russian scribes that all try to follow what Tolstoy’s lead. There’s Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, which uses the chaos of the Russian Revolution for it’s backdrop, while centering on the doomed love of Yuri and Lara. There’s Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate, which really is like Tolstoy, with countless number of characters, both real and fictitious, all existing in orbit of the World War II Battle of Stalingrad. It’s a 1942 setting of War and Peace, with scenes given to Stalin and Field Marshal Paulus, countering philosophical discussions and at least one romance. And finally, there’s Generations of Winter by Vasily Aksyonov, which follows three generations of one family, and how they survive (?) the Stalin years. Again, real historical figures interact with the fictitious ones the author created….just like Tolstoy.
Now it is interesting to me that both Doctor Zhivago and Life and Fate ran afoul of Soviet authorities. The manuscript to both works had to be smuggled out of the Soviet Union in order to be published. Good thing Tolstoy was writing when he did, I suppose! I enjoyed all three of these successors to War and Peace, though out of the three, I suspect Life and Fate is the best constructed novel. Too many coincidental “run-ins” in Doctor Zhivago leaves one to believe that there were only around 15 people in Russia at the time! Doctor Zhivago, as you probably know, had been filmed by Sir David Lean, with Omar Sharif as Yuri and Julie Christie as Lara. Now, I did not know there was also a Hollywood version of War and Peace, shot in the 1950s. I’d never heard of it, but it apparently had quite the cast, at least as far as the leads were concerned: Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda. And that’s how the Soviet version came to be. This was the time of the Cold War and the Space Race. Hollywood had made a version of Tolstoy’s epic, the magnum opus of a Russian literary giant, a novel that deals with a vital moment in Russian history. Hollywood had done that! And so, Russia must answer!
Russian officers toast their upcoming success over Napoleon in 1805. Pierre Bezukhov (front, right) does not agree with going to war. He is portrayed by director Sergei Bondarchuk.
And answer they did! Mosfilm’s War and Peace is, in all likelihood, the most expensive movie ever made. It took something like 6 years to make, and no expense was spared. Look at the picture above. All those magnificent period costumes. Look at the setting, a banquet of the aristocracy. Look at the table settings. Everything is gorgeous! Look at the balcony in the back; there’s an actual orchestra up there, moving. Whether they were making music, I can’t say. But the point is, it’s actual extras, all in period costume. How many people are in that frame?!
Take a look at this next picture….that ballroom, those costumes, that chandelier! And again….how many people? This was no small-scale production!
Mosfilms’ War and Peace came out in the mid 1960s, was very popular in the Soviet Union and beyond, received critical acclaim (the first Soviet film to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Langue Film)….and then sort of faded away. It’s recently been restored and now is making the arthouse cinema rounds. As anyone who has tried to take on reading War and Peace can attest, it’s a LOT of pages. Director Sergei Bondarchuk, an actor who had only directed one film before, breaks Tolstoy down into four separate installments, each (after the first one) a little under 2 hours. And the good folks at Amherst Cinema had the courtesy to spread viewings out over the course of a week, so you didn’t have to binge the entire epic in one 7 and 1/2 hour day. That worked great for me: Part 1 on Saturday, Part 2 on Sunday, Part 3 on Tuesday, and then concluding it all with Part 4 on Thursday.
The division reflects Tolstoy’s own, but even with 7 and 1/2 hours to play with, there’s way more to Tolstoy than Bondarchuk and his team could fit into film. Characters were reduced (or eliminated) and subplots forgotten. I can’t really explain that too well what was subtracted, as it’s been so long since I read Tolstoy. What I do know is, I had a hard time keeping track of everyone. Sure, I could follow close enough who Pierre (wonderfully portrayed by director Bondarchuk; he looked exactly how I’ve always pictured him), Natasha and Andrei were. And the historical figures such as Russian commander in chief Kutuzov and, of course, Napoleon himself, were easy enough to identify. But who were Natasha’s family in the country? Not to mention who were the family of Andrei and Pierre? Who was the rakish officer who seduces (I think) Natasha in part 2? And what happened to Pierre’s wife? Did I miss something? They are an awkward, arranged couple in Part 2….and then it seems they’re no longer together. What happened to her, where did she go? Lastly, who was the excitable young Russian officer who is killed during Napoleon’s retreat, near the end of Part 4? He had to be someone important to get 15- 20 minutes of screen time devoted to him, and then to be shown as a casualty of war. I can’t think he was just a random person Bondarchuk decided to showcase. Maybe that’s just a Russian thing; I remember struggling with that when reading Zhivago, of how characters would reappear after being out of the narrative for a hundred pages. I would find myself scurrying backwards, to reacquaint myself with them. And maybe if I had a more recent familiarity with Tolstoy, I’d better know who everyone was. But then again….should one have to have read the book to enjoy the movie? Did the average Soviet audience in 1965 know their Tolstoy, so limited cinematic backstory was needed? I can’t answer that.
Pierre’s wife…..I think? Not sure if the gentlemen to the right is someone important. Anyone got a copy of Tolstoy handy?
So, what is Mosfilm’s War and Peace? First off, it’s beautiful to look at as a walk back in time. Bondarchuk (or his Soviet supervisors) insisted on historical accuracy, and like I said, spared no expense. And while James Cameron can do that with CGI in Titanic, that wasn’t an option for Bondarhuk and his staff. It’s interesting that the authorities had no problem with the lavish detail with which the lives of early 19th century Russian aristocracy is shown. You would think that would be anathema to the Soviet ideal. Yet, the balls and banquets absolutely glimmered. I guess we do see the well-to-do of St. Petersburg society, completely unaffected by the disaster of Austerlitz or the hardships endured by those leaving Moscow. And we also see Pierre, in his wonderful gentlemen’s clothes, go out to observe Borodino. I guess that’s a subtle nod to Marxist dogma; the rich not bothered by the nastiness of war. But then again, Tolstoy shows war coming for all. The Rostov family retreats from Moscow and lodges in a cabin like everyone else. Pierre’s handsome outfit is soon covered in mud, and he volunteers to bring cartridges to the artillery battalion. Rich and poor suffer….somewhat. Tolstoy’s characters are all of the elite of Russian society, and the Soviet film version doesn’t shy away from that; to do so would have been to re-write the source material! Just like religion isn’t shunted away. We see characters frequently crossing themselves, invoking God and offering their prayers. I would have thought a Soviet War and Peace would have downplayed, if not outright removed, references to religion, but apparently that wasn’t the case. The Orthodox Church was part of everyday Russian life in 1805 – 1812, and so it is shown here. Kudos to Bondurchuk, Mosfilm, and the supervising cultural authorities, for letting historical accuracy take precedence over the need to promote Soviet state atheism.
Pierre in that wonderful gentleman’s outfit, observing the preparations for Borodino
What else is War and Peace? Well, what’s the first word in the title? Bondarchuk’s film has to rank among the most impressive combats films ever made. I’d put it right there with Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. Apparently, Soviet Red Army units were assigned to film, to create the thousands needed to bring Napoleonic warfare to life. And does it ever come to life. There are so many images that strike you: the end of Part 3, as the Grand Armeé marches across the Russian frontier, row upon row. The Russian artillery units at both Schöngrabern and Borodino, firing cannonade after cannonade, despite the Russian positions collapsing. You can feel what it was like….the black clouds of smoke turning a day into a fiery, Hellish cauldron; artillery-men stripped of their jackets but still wearing their caps, their chests covered in grease. And yet, just a mile away, the sun shining on a clear day. Regiments preparing to march into combat, going forward to the cheerful sounds of a military band, no one uttering a word as random individuals in the ranks are felled by shots from ahead. The general staffs of both the French and the Russians, in their brilliant dress uniforms, watching the battle on nearby bluffs, telescopes in hand. We have Napoleon’s waiter, preparing him a lunch while the Hell of Borodino plays out in front of him. Bondarchuk makes use of the entire canvas; countless aerial and long distance shots give the view a feel for how spread out the lines were, and how many different mini-battles played out in the course of the larger conflict. And much like current film-makers, Bondarchuk is fond of removing the sound, slowing down the moment, to freeze the horror and chaos, before returning us to the melee. He’s at his strongest in bringing intimacy to these moments of history. We have a young idealistic Russian calvary officer panicked after his horse has been shot underneath him at Austerlitz, and Andrei Bolkonsky, one of our protagonists, contemplating if this is the end of life, when a grenade explodes near him. These intimate moments include even the characters we know from the historical record. I don’t claim to know the Russian actors who brought Tolstoy to life, but the one who played Napoleon did a fine job. Military historians to this day argue if Napoleon should have committed the Imperial Guard at Borodino. Bondarchuk gives us that moment, when the French General Staff argues for this, and their Emperor overrules them. Vladislav Strzhelchik is the actor who portrayed Napoleon, and his facial expression at this moment show a Bonaparte unsure of himself….which fits with Tolstoy’s own vision. History had decided Napoleon’s time was to end.
Le Grand Armeé marches into Russia. No CGI here! How many thousands in full French Army costumes?
Le Emperor at Borodino
Le Grand Armeé at Borodino
Kutuzov and staff, at Borodino
Bondarchuk’s War and Peace is a BIG film. It deals with sizable source material, and with an unlimited budget, the idea seems to have been to show the world just what the Soviet film industry could accomplish. And on that, it definitely wows. The epic moments are just that. The Grand Armeé’s entry into a deserted Moscow was particularly striking. Again, no CGI was used. One has to imagine Soviet law enforcement completely clearing large areas of city, filmmakers reimagining it as it appeared in 1812, and then parading thousands of Red Army soldiers, dressed in French uniforms of the early 19th century. The soon-to-follow ransacking of the city by the French, and the ensuing fire is an orgy of chaos that leaves the viewer in awe. And here again, the filmmakers didn’t shy away from religion. We are supposed to be offended by the French ransacking cathedrals. But don’t think that all of Bondarchuk’s epic moments are of the war. A wolfhunt that Natasha participates in is given the same amount of spectacle as the battle scenes.
Andrei Bolkonosky on the left, Natasha Rostova on the right.
And that’s what Bondarchuk’s War and Peace works as: a spectacle to look at. I don’t remember much of the dialogue, but how much of that is due to the film being in Russian, with subtitles. This was further complicated by that fact that the film relies extensively upon a narrator. Not only does the narrator give the historical overview, but even fills in much of what the characters are thinking, the way Tolstoy himself would. What makes that challenging is, Bondarchuk often has his characters give internal monologues, to let us know what they are thinking. While that can work with the case of Natasha, as seen above, it can becoming when its a male character monologuing. Was that Andrei thinking or the narrator? All I can tell is that it’s a Russian male voice, and the subtitles doesn’t differentiate. Now, if I was a Russian watching this in a theatre in, say, Leningrad in 1967, that wouldn’t really be a problem. So I can’t really put that on Bondarchuk.
There’s no question Bondarchuk was out to tell a story by image. He gives many close-ups of actors’ faces, letting their expressions speak for themselves. Take a look at Lyudmila Savelyeva above, as Natasha. Her uncertainty about her feelings for Andrei is made obvious to us by every detail i her face. Below is Bondarchuk as Pierre, observing Borodino. He has no lines during the entire sequence; we can only read his face (which is shown repeatedly) to guess his thoughts and emotions.
Even real life figures are dependent on the close-up for us to know what they are thinking. Yes, our omniscient narrator provides the context, but it’s the face that provides the ol’ “kick in the gut.” Two scenes, taken straight from history, really illustrate this. Perhaps my favorite segments in the film(s) is Napoleon in full dress, pacing in his Moscow headquarters, waiting for the Russian surrender that was never to come. Actor Vladislav Strzhelchik has no lines in the scene; his impatient steps and his facial expressions tell more than dialogue could. Boris Zakhava, as Kutuzov, has a similar scene. There’s a scene near the beginning of Part 4, where he has told his staff that, after Borodino, the Russian Army will not be able to defend Moscow. One by one, his officers leave the room, and we’re given a close-up of Kutuzov, his face buried in his hands. That one shot tells us more about what he feels, about leaving the city open to the French invaders, than any monologue could (either by him or the narrator). Later on, we get the reverse, when Kutuzov is brought the news that Napoleon is leaving the city. Credit Bondarchuk, who knew that if he was going to adapt a book for the film, he needed to do what print couldn’t. He had to show, rather than tell. That’s probably why the dialogue is forgotten, but the image stays with you.
Try and read Napoleon’s mind
General Kutuzov contemplates leaving Moscow to the French
Now, I will say, I do feel at times that Bondarchuk fell too love in with images. Look at this one below:
Arresting, isn’t it? It’s citizens of Moscow, several of them teenagers, being executed by a French Army firing squad. Behind are smoke clouds from the burning of the city. In the foreground, the bayonets of French rifles. It’s definitely a powerful image, and you have to think Bondarchuk had Goya’s The Third of May, 1808 in mind we he filmed it. See below for the similarities.
Spaniards facing a French firing squad. I’m guessing Sergei Bondarchuk was more than a little familiar with this painting of Francisco Goya
The problem is, Bondarchuk stays with it for nearly 15 minutes. You remember that scene from Platoon, where Willem Dafoe races to catch up to the helicopter, North Vietnamese in pursuit, and Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings replacing all the battle sounds? It’s all iconic, from the Dafoe’s face to that of Tom Berringer, to the aerial shots of Defoe running, with his pursuers in chase, from the POV of those in the helicopter. But here’s the thing; that entire sequence lasts probably 2 or 3 minutes. Director Oliver Stone makes his moment and moves on. It’s iconic, it dwells with you, and you’re not beaten over the head with it. Bondarchuk spends probably uses 10 times as much screen time,to show the firing squad scene. It’s effective…but we got the point early on. And this is far from an isolated moment for him.
I’ve told you how characters are developed through their facial expression. That’s incredibly effective at certain dramatic moments. But there also comes a point where, well, to borrow a lyric from As Times Goes By, “a face is just a face.” Yes, Natasha Rostova’s emotional development from adolescent to woman, and all the missteps she makes along the way, is written in her face. And yes, Andrei Bolkonsky’s conflict between devotion to duty and his longing for a private life, are also detailed through his face. But too much of anything, even a good thing, can be just that….too much. That would probably be my strongest criticism of Bondarchuk’s War and Peace; it’s tendency to stay too long with something. Even the justly acclaimed battle scenes seem to go on. Now, you can argue that was his point; war shouldn’t be pleasant. I’ll grant you that. And it’s probably unfair to compare Bondarchuk to Steven Spielberg. The Omaha Beach D-Day Landing in Saving Private Ryan is a narrow geographic field, compared to the wide open fields of Austerlitz or Borodino. Still, I’d be lying if I didn’t say, as impressive as the battlefield filming was, that I wasn’t somewhat bored with it by the end. Now….that being said…the ending shot of Austerlitz is beyond spectacular. It’s an aerial shot pulling back to reveal the victorious French cavalry riding in circles. Take a look:
I’ll give Bondarchuk his due; he knew how to end things!
Or did he? I know this is going to sound bizarre, but after 7 and 1/2 hours, War and Peace felt like it ended too soon. Moscow is being rebuilt, Pierre has returned and embraces Natasha…and that’s it. The narrator gives some philosophical dialogue as the camera ascends from the Russian countryside and into the clouds, triumphant music playing. That’s it? Do we just assume Pierre and Natasha live happily ever after, since it’s assumed any filmgoer already knows their Tolstoy? What about Tolstoy’s epilogue, where we see Pierre and Natasha married? I can’t recall if Tolstoy tells us they have children, but the point is, there’s no ambiguity as to their fate. They do live, for all intents and purposes, happily ever after. Would it have killed Bondarchuk to have given us just a glimpse of their life together? Perhaps the camera peeks in on Pierre and Natasha, with children playing on the floor, and then rises up into those Russian skies? I know, I get it; 7 and 1/2 hours were already in the can….but I’m talking 5 minutes. It would’ve been worth it!
Tolstoy’s second epilogue, which I admittedly skimmed through back when I read War and Peace, is his essay about history. It’s where he takes on The Great Man theory, and why he believes you can’t credit historical moments to the individual. Now granted, that essay doesn’t really translate to film; I’m not sure what Bondarchuk would’ve done with it. But here’s where I wonder if the Soviet authorities gave some “input.” They obviously felt highly enough about War and Peace as a national epic to want to film it at lavish expense, for all the world to see. But I would think Tolstoy’s thesis, of diminishing the importance of “Great Man” was not what the Soviets wanted to champion. Sure, I imagine you’re saying, “How can that be? Doesn’t Marxism, by its nature, champion the collective over the individual? Well, I’m sure it does….in principle. But from Stalin on, the Soviet Union was as nationalistic as any country out there. It engaged in hero-making, and promoted Russian heroes from without it’s history. Remember, Bondarchuk’s film came out in the mid-1960s. The Cold War is going on. Why would you want to promote Tolstoy’s take on history, when you have Mikhail Kutuzov? Russia’s own, beating the great Napoleon Bonaparte? You got that? A Russian defending the homeland from Western invaders. Let’s not forget that during the Second World War, the Soviet Union established the Order of Kutuzov, as a way of honoring military heroes. Furthermore, the Red Army launched offensive operations named after Kutuzov and Bagration, a Russian general who lost his life at Borodino. Soviet censors could accept the lives of 19th century Russian aristocracy and outright signs of religious devotion. But to devalue the importance of a national hero, at a time when the State was in opposition to the West? Well, that tone of Tolstoy needed a bit adjusting!
Prince Kutuzov reviews the captured French standards. Hero-making was in full effect for Mosfilm!
I cannot claim to be an aficionado of Soviet cinema. The only other work I’ve seen before is Sergei Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky, another film that draws upon an epic of Russia defeating Western invaders. That film, made during the Stalin Era, is unmistakable in its political message. The invading Teutonic Knights are shown repeatedly to be overtly Christian, whereas the Russian populace of the 13th Century lacked any signs of religion. Not to much the whole idea of a German invading force being defeated by a national hero…Eisenstein sure knew how to select a timely story! Those invaders are shown committing all kinds of atrocities and have no redeeming values. With Bondarchuk, though, it’s a different story. Now obviously, he’s working from Leo Tolstoy as source material, whereas Eisenstein had Medieval Russian history/folklore to draw from. In other words, Eisenstein could take more liberties from a source that wasn’t as well-known as Tolstoy. Still, just as I observed how the Soviets may have reduced/removed Tolstoy’s view of history, they left in plenty of his other views.
Look at the French. Yes, they are invaders, and yes we saw them ransacking Moscow. But they are not inhuman as the Teutonic Knights were in Alexander Nevsky. There’s a scene in Part 4, where a French captain comes to dine with Pierre. He monologues boastfully, but also comes off as respecting the Russians. He’s not a barbarian, and as such, appears to be still alive the film’s end. When Pierre was a prisoner, not every member of the French firing squad seemed happy with their assignment. And near the end of the film, Bondarchuk shows us what has become of the Grand Armeé: starving, shivering in inadequate uniforms, frost-bitten, deserted by their Emperor. When captured, they are treated hospitably by Russian Army, provided with food, drink and warmth. There is a recognition between soldiers of the different armies that they are all brothers. It’s unclear where Kutuzov stood with this; his final speech recognizes that the French are human beings like them, but he also pronounces judgment on them coming uninvited.
Perhaps this was to be Mosfilm’s biggest Communist statement. They were giving their Soviet take on their own Russian national epic. The last time Napoleon is seen in the film, he is steely-eyed, riding in an enclosed carriage. The narrator informs us that he is speeding away under a different name, leaving his army behind. The camera pulls back. The first ranks of the retreating Grand Armeé appear organized, marching with their standards held high. As the camera proceeds down the long column, we see the army gradually dissolve. At the very end, it’s no longer an army. Rather, its corpses of men and horses, while stragglers crawl to keep ahead of winter’s howl. Above all this is the voice of Napoleon portrayer Vladislav Strzhelchik, boastfully speaking to his troops of the glory that awaits them in Russia. Now we see what Napoleon’s braggadocio brought them: cold, starvation, death and desertion by their Emperor. There’s your Marxist ideology exported to the world, courtesy of Leo Tolstoy by way of Mosfilm: the soldiers of the armies are brothers; it is their Imperialist overlords who put them at odds. Could Vladimir Lenin during the First World War have said it any better?
I don’t know enough about the historical record to tell you what happened to the captured French. Earlier, we saw a captured French youth being given all kinds of hospitality. Whether that’s true, or whether the Russians executed/treated harshly their captives, I don’t know. But what Bondarchuk gives us is a Russia whose grievance is with the enemy leader; amongst the common fighting man, brotherhood. That’s quite a statement for the Soviet Union to make. 1965 – 1967, we’re in the middle of the Cold War, and as America is becoming embroiled in Vietnam. Don’t listen to your war-mongering Western leaders; we’re all brothers down here. Whether that message resonated in the West, I have no idea. And how true it is in keeping with Tolstoy, that I also couldn’t tell you.
My, 6,000 words written. Well, I am dealing with a 7 and 1/2 hour, 4 part film adaptation of a book that is over 1,400 pages long….there’s no way to be brief whenever War and Peace is involved. So what is Sergei Bondarchuk’s War and Peace? A spectacle. It’s a feast for the senses. You may not remember its dialogue, you may be confused by who the characters are (or where they went)….but you won’t forget what you saw. Or what you heard. I don’t have enough space (or time) to write about Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov’s score. Suffice it to say, no expense was spared there, either, as the credits tell us that a State Orchestra and Chorus were involved. My particular highlight was the marching tune played behind the French lines. I don’t know if it was authentic or composed for the film, but it sure was effective. The savagery of Borodino rages, while Napoleon and staff are serenading by this triumphant tune. Look out for that incoming cannon ball!
If anyone sees this album anywhere, please let me know! It seems to be unavailable. Perhaps with the restoration of the film, the soundtrack will be next….please!
Is War and Peace perfect? Far from it. The ending feels rushed and too many times, Bondarchuk takes his time dwelling on images. In addition to the close-up on faces, he loves split-screens, slow dissolves, and a blurred screen whenever a character is in and out of consciousness. In some regards, War and Peace reminds me of Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins. I know that sounds absurd, but hear me out. Mary Poppins wasn’t ground-breaking cinema, but what it was, was Walt Disney showing, after 40 years in show business, he could take what everyone else had been doing in Hollywood, and put his own spin on it. Original songs….Sherman Brothers…check. Discovered new starlet making her screen debut…..Julie Andrews….check. Big time dance segments…..check. Wonderfully recreated period city, all put together on a sound stage…..check. Animation that Disney was known for….check. In many ways, Mary Poppins, was a synthesis of everything that had been previously done in the movie business, a way of Walt Disney showing that his studio could now do anything MGM, Warner Brothers, Universal, Fox and the like could do, just as well. He was part of their club.
And in that way, that’s what Mosfilm’s/Sergei Bondarchuk’s War and Peace is. The techniques Bondarchuk uses are impressive….but they’re not innovative. You want innovation ahead of its time and Napoleon? See Abel Gance’s silent epic from the 1920s….that is, if you got nothing to do for 6 hours! From the aerial views to the impeccable attention to detail and accuracy, all is perfect, but it’s not new. It’s what happens when an entire nation (and not just any nation, one of the world’s two super powers, at the time) gets behind a production. Give a director and his team an unlimited budget, a national epic that everyone takes pride in, and here’s what happens. That’s War and Peace. It’s Mosfilm, and beyond that, the Soviet Union as a whole, showing to he world, we can make just as good, if not better, than Hollywood. Here’s everything you’ve been doing in Southern California for the past 40 years. We can do that too! And if that was the purpose, than I have to say Sergei Bondarchuk and Mosfilm succeeded immensely with War and Peace. A Soviet synthesis of everything film-making had been up to 1965.
Even at its most intimate moments, from the first time Pierre tells Natasha he cares for her, to its most grandiose (the French cavalry in their victory circle at Austerlitz), War and Peace is a spectacle to behold. The setting, the costumes, the detail; you don’t just watch War and Peace…you experience it. From the aristocratic ballrooms of high society St. Petersburg to be the field headquarters of the French and Russian Armies, Sergei Bondarchuk and Mosfilm don’t merely present to you Tolstoy; they put you in Tolstoy. This is spectacle. It’s not perfect, but it’s also not to be missed. I know it’s available on DVD, but if you have an art house cinema near you, and you have multiple showings throughout the week, do yourself a favor. As a member of Amherst Cinema, it cost me $20 in total to see all 4 parts. One Andrew Jackson and I was immersed in Russia during the time of Napoleon. For someone in the early stages of a re-occuring case of Bonaparte-Mania, I can’t think of a better fuel to throw on that fire.
The only question remaining is….how will Amherst Cinema feed my next mania, whenever that comes?!
Napoleon encounters a wounded Andrei Bolkonsky, on the field of Austerlitz. Just look at how that shot is framed! That’s why YOU need to see War and Peace the way Sergei Bondarchuk intended, on a big screen! Big book, big subject: big film!
guyinaboater 