Release Date: June 25, 2019
Prices and Links:
Criterion - $39.96
Amazon - $34.22
Director: Sergei Bondarchuk
Starring: Sergei Bondarchuk, Lyudmila Savelyeva, Vyacheslav Tikhonov, Anastasiya Vertinskaya,Oleg Tabakov
At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet film industry set out to prove it could outdo Hollywood with a production that would dazzle the world: a titanic, awe-inspiring adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s classic tome in which the fates of three souls—the blundering, good-hearted Pierre; the heroically tragic Prince Andrei; and the radiant, tempestuous Natasha—collide amid the tumult of the Napoleonic Wars. Employing a cast of thousands and an array of innovative camera techniques, director Sergei Bondarchuk conjures a sweeping vision of grand balls that glitter with rococo beauty and breathtaking battles that overwhelm with their expressionistic power. As a statement of Soviet cinema’s might, War and Peace succeeded wildly, garnering the Academy Award for best foreign-language film and setting a new standard for epic moviemaking.
SPECIAL FEATURES
Prices and Links:
Criterion - $39.96
Amazon - $34.22
Director: Sergei Bondarchuk
Starring: Sergei Bondarchuk, Lyudmila Savelyeva, Vyacheslav Tikhonov, Anastasiya Vertinskaya,Oleg Tabakov
- Soviet Union
- 1966
- 422 minutes
- Color
- 2.35:1
- Russian, French
At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet film industry set out to prove it could outdo Hollywood with a production that would dazzle the world: a titanic, awe-inspiring adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s classic tome in which the fates of three souls—the blundering, good-hearted Pierre; the heroically tragic Prince Andrei; and the radiant, tempestuous Natasha—collide amid the tumult of the Napoleonic Wars. Employing a cast of thousands and an array of innovative camera techniques, director Sergei Bondarchuk conjures a sweeping vision of grand balls that glitter with rococo beauty and breathtaking battles that overwhelm with their expressionistic power. As a statement of Soviet cinema’s might, War and Peace succeeded wildly, garnering the Academy Award for best foreign-language film and setting a new standard for epic moviemaking.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- New 2K digital restoration, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New interviews with cinematographer Anatoly Petritsky and filmmaker Fedor Bondarchuk, son of Sergei Bondarchuk
- Two 1966 documentaries about the making of the film
- Television program from 1967 profiling actor Ludmila Savelyeva, and featuring Sergei Bondarchuk
- New program with historian Denise J. Youngblood (Bondarchuk’s “War and Peace”: Literary Classic to Soviet Cinematic Epic) detailing the cultural and historical contexts for the film
- Janus rerelease trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by critic Ella Taylor
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