page_title: War and Peace (film series)
section_title: Development
hierarchical_section_title: War and Peace (film series) / Production / Development
caption_attribution_description: Режиссерский сценарий "Войны и мира" Бондарчука. Музей "Бородинская панорама"
context_page_description: War and Peace is a 1966–67 Soviet war drama film co-written and directed by Sergei Bondarchuk and a film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's 1869 novel War and Peace. The film, released in four installments throughout 1966 and 1967, starred Bondarchuk in the leading role of Pierre Bezukhov, alongside Vyacheslav Tikhonov and Ludmila Savelyeva, who depicted Prince Andrei Bolkonsky and Natasha Rostova.
  The film was produced by the Mosfilm studios between 1961 and 1967, with considerable support from the Soviet authorities and the Red Army which provided hundreds of horses and over ten thousand soldiers as extras. At a cost of 8.29 million Soviet rubles – equal to US$9.21 million at 1967 rates, or $50–60 million in 2017, accounting for ruble inflation – it was the most expensive film made in the Soviet Union. Upon its release, it became a success with audiences, selling approximately 135 million tickets in the USSR. War and Peace also won the Grand Prix in the Moscow International Film Festival, the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
context_section_description: On 3 April 1961, Vladimir Surin, the director-general of the Mosfilm studios, sent Furtseva a letter requesting to approve the adaptation of a script for a film in three parts based on War and Peace, as well as to allocate 150,000 Soviet ruble in funds. On 5 May the Minister replied, authorizing to begin writing the scenario and granting R30,000. On that day, the work on the picture began.
  Bondarchuk hired Vasily Solovyov, a playwright, as his assistant for composing the script. The two later changed the earlier premise and decided to make four parts instead of three. They chose to downplay or exclude completely several of Tolstoy's plotlines and themes, in order not to make the film too cumbersome: the episodes concerning Nikolai Rostov and Maria Bolkonskaya were reduced, and Anatol Kuragin received a slightly better treatment. The author's views on philosophy and history were substantially redacted.
  The Mosfilm directorate approved the finished script on 27 February 1962. On 20 March, in a plenum in the Ministry of Culture attended by Surin and the State Committee for Cinematography's deputy chairman Basakov, Furtseva approved the scenario and requested all relevant agencies to assist the producers, including the Ministry of Defense, which was deemed central in providing support for the project.
  The producers appointed three military advisers: Army General Vladimir Kurasov became the film's chief consultant, and Army General Markian Popov assisted as well; Lieutenant General Nikolai Oslikovsky was brought as an expert on cavalry. The Soviet Army would supply thousands of soldiers as extras during the filming.
  More than forty museums contributed historical artifacts, such as chandeliers, furniture and cutlery, to create an authentic impression of the early 19th-century Russia. Thousands of costumes were sewn, mainly military uniform of the sorts worn in the Napoleonic Wars, including 11,000 shakos. Sixty obsolete cannons were cast and 120 wagons and carts constructed for the production.
  Anticipating the need for cavalry, line producer Nikolai Ivanov and General Osilkovsky began seeking appropriate horses. While the cavalry formations of the Army were long abolished, several units in the Transcaucasian Military District and the Turkestan Military District retained horse drawn mountain artillery. In addition to those, the Ministry of Agriculture gave away nine hundred horses and the Moscow City Police organized a detachment from its mounted regiment. The producers also needed to arrange hounds for the wolf hunting at the Rostov estate. At first, it was planned to use Borzois, as depicted in the novel. Sixteen such were obtained from individual private owners, but the dogs had no experience in hunting and were hard to handle. Eventually, scent hounds supplied by the Ministry of Defense chased down the wolves – provided by the zoological department of the State Studio for Popular Science Films – while the Borzoi caught them.
caption: The director's screenplay of War and Peace.
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