War and Peace (1956 film)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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War and Peace (Template:Lang-it) is a 1956 epic historical drama film based on Leo Tolstoy's 1869 novel of the same name. It is directed and co-written by King Vidor and produced by Dino De Laurentiis and Carlo Ponti for Paramount Pictures. The film stars Audrey Hepburn as Natasha, Henry Fonda as Pierre, and Mel Ferrer as Andrei, along with Oskar Homolka, Vittorio Gassman, Herbert Lom, Jeremy Brett, John Mills and Anita Ekberg in one of her first breakthrough roles. The musical score was composed by Nino Rota and conducted by Franco Ferrara.
War and Peace opened on August 21, 1956 to a mixed reception, with some reviewers critical with the film truncating much of Tolstoy's novel, and the casting of 50-year-old Henry Fonda as the 20-year-old Pierre Bezukhov. It received Academy Awards nominations for Best Director, Best Cinematography (Color), and Best Costume Design (Color).
Legacy
Upon its release on August 1959, the 1956 film inspired the Soviet Union to produce a film adaptation of Tolstoy's novel directed by Sergei Bondarchuk (who played Pierre Bezukhov) and co-starred with Vyacheslav Tikhonov and Ludmila Savelyeva as Prince Andrei Bolkonsky and Natasha Rostova. This 4-part film adaptation is critically-acclaimed for its realistic battle scenes, which it won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
See also
- List of American films of 1956
- List of Italian films of 1956
- War and Peace - 1941 opera composed by Sergei Prokofiev
- War and Peace - 1966-67 film series directed by Sergei Bondarchuk
- War and Peace - 1972 TV 20-part BBC Production
- War and Peace - 2007 TV 4-Part French-Italian mini series
- War & Peace - 2016 British-American TV mini series, BBC and A&E Production
