While Bondarchuk was by no means a young man when he was commissioned to work on this project, he was still a novice director with only a single pictures, a successful adaptation of a short WWII story, to his name. Bondarchuk of course had already been an established acting star for a decade but thespian skills mean little behind the camera, and as a director he was woefully unprepared to undertake a production of such scale. And it shows through muddled shot compositions especially apparent in group scenes, often unfortunate camera positions, performances of wildly varying quality for the director was apparently so overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the task actors were apparently left to their own devices, awkward voiceovers that sound like radio broadcast announcements.

Vidor's "War and Peace" was probably the main reason that prompted the Soviet government to spare no expense on this production. The USSR release of the Vidor's picture made quite a splash. Certainly, Bondarchuk wanted to emulate the greatest strength of the Hollywood film and find his own Audrey. His final choice, Lyudmila Savelyeva, a big-eyed sprightly dark-haired thing indeed somewhat resembles Hepburn. Unfortunately she was a Kirov ballet dancer without neither acting experience nor talent, so unsurprisingly the most kind word that I can find to describe her performance is "awful".

Though it might be expected that Soviet actors, speaking the same language as Tolstoy's characters, would have better understanding of them than foreigners but this War and Peace often proves that not to be the case. The revolutionary upheaval swept away the thin upper layer of Russian cultural soil, that the world of War and Peace grown out of, so a good share of these big name Soviet actors involved in this production often look as clueless as Americans performing Shakespeare ( I don't mean of course that American actors can't possibly play Shakespeare credibly, but you'll know what I mean if you witnessed American members of the cast in Branagh's adaptations). Of the three main characters only Bondarchuk's Pierre is commendable, but even he was too old for the part and feels out of place in the early going.
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