War and Peace

:See also War and Peace (album)

Adaptations

• Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev made an opera based on this epic novel during the 1940s. The complete musical work premiered in Leningrad in 1955.
• American director, King Vidor, made a 208-minute long film in 1956 titled War and Peace starring Audrey Hepburn (Natasha), Henry Fonda (Pierre) and Mel Ferrer (Andrei). Audrey Hepburn is considered perfect as Natasha, but Henry Fonda is too "Yankeefied" as the introspective Pierre. Overall, the film has been known as "Too much peace, but not enough war."
• War and Peace (1968): Soviet director Sergei Bondarchuk made a critically acclaimed four-part film version (Vojna i mir) of the novel in 1968 starring Lyudmila Savelyeva (as Natasha Rostova) and Vyacheslav Tikhonov (as Andrei Bolkonsky). The film was almost nine hours long, involved thousands of actors and extras and won an Oscar for its authenticity and massive scale. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063794/ Bondarchuk also played the character of Pierre Bezukhov. By the time Bondarchuk made this film, the flawless image of Natasha as created by Audrey Hepburn had taken a precedent favorable position in the Western audience, and it was therefore a challenge for the director to select an actress for this role. The result was that the selected actress, Lyudmila Savelyeva, looked almost exactly like Audrey Hepburn. Another interesting fact about the film is that it took seven years to finish the shooting and the actors/actresses age dramatically from scene to scene.
• The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) made a television miniseries based on the novel in 1973-74. Anthony Hopkins played the lead role of Pierre.
• A stage adaptation by Helen Edmundson was published in 1996 by Nick Hern Books, London. The play was first produced in 1996 at the Royal National Theatre.