War and Peace

American audiences never truly got to see Sergei Bondarchuk’s epic adaptation of Tolstoy’s 1869 masterpiece as the director intended: the seven-hour-plus production was dubbed into English and shorn of one hour for its 1968 Oscar-winning theatrical release, while earlier home entertainment versions were either a clumsy pan-and-scan presentation or, in the case of the RUSCICO import, struck from a print badly in need of restoration. This Criterion Collection offering features the complete original Russian-language version with a glorious 2K digital restoration in the correct 2.35:1 aspect ratio. The Soviet government-controlled film industry spared no expense in staging this massive extravaganza, with hundreds of extras populating the graceful ball sequence, the disturbing Battle of Borodino, and the truly harrowing recreation of the evacuation of Moscow ahead of Napoleon’s advance. And while War and Peace is a masterwork of grand-scale cinema, it remains highly effective as an intense emotional drama with a deeply moving central love triangle that is brought to vibrant life with fully-textured performances by Ludmila Savelyeva as Natasha, Vyacheslav Tikhonov as Prince Andrei, and Bondarchuk himself as Pierre. Extras include archival documentaries on the film’s creation, a new documentary on War and Peace featuring historian Denise J. Youngblood, new interviews with cinematographer Anatoly Petritsky and Fedor Bondarchuk (the director’s son), and a booklet with an essay by critic Ella Taylor. Highly recommended. Editor’s Choice. (P. Hall)