War and Peace (1956) on Netflix
Napoleon Bonaparte's armies overrun Europe, and Moscow's young men join the fight. Pierre Bezukhov, illegitimate son of a dying count, has returned from Paris a believer in Napoleon.
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Trailer
Plot summary
In 1805, Napoleon Bonaparte's drive for territory has torn Europe apart, and Moscow's young men join the army, among them Nicholas Rostov, son of Count Ilya Rostov and brother of the flighty Natasha. Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of the ailing Count Bezukhov, has come home from Paris believing Napoleon can bring equality and liberty. At the rooms of the rake Dolokhov, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky tells him that his estranged father, near death, is calling for him. At his father's mansion the relatives snub Pierre. Andrei, whose wife Lise is expecting, advises Pierre never to marry, then leaves for the front as an adjutant to Field Marshal Kutuzov. Hélène Kuragina pursues Pierre.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about War and Peace (1956)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Audrey Hepburn, then one of the biggest female stars in the world, only won the role of Natasha after the studio's first choice, Jean Simmons, turned it down.
- Hepburn had earlier rejected producer Mike Todd's attempt to cast her in his own version of the story, but agreed to star for Dino De Laurentiis and Carlo Ponti only after they offered her a record salary of $350,000.
- Director King Vidor wanted Paul Scofield or Peter Ustinov for Pierre, but producer Dino De Laurentiis rejected both as unmarketable; Gregory Peck, Montgomery Clift, Stewart Granger, Richard Burton and Marlon Brando were all considered before the studio settled on Henry Fonda, who at 50 was widely seen as too old for the 20-year-old character.
- Henry Fonda later said he regretted taking the role of Pierre and had only done it for the money and because he loved the novel, adding that the script he first read was very different from the heavily revised one actually used on set.
- Henry Fonda clashed repeatedly with producer Dino De Laurentiis, who had apparently never read the novel and wanted Pierre played as a conventional romantic hero without glasses; Fonda said De Laurentiis flew into screaming rages at the sight of them, so Fonda only wore them when De Laurentiis was off set.
- The film had six credited screenwriters, an unusually high number even for 1956, and its first draft ran five hundred six pages, roughly five times the length of an average screenplay.
- Writer Irwin Shaw reportedly demanded his name be removed from the credits after learning that director King Vidor's wife, Elizabeth Hill, had rewritten much of his dialogue.
- The film's success in the Soviet Union inspired Sergei Bondarchuk's own four-part Soviet adaptation of Tolstoy's novel in the 1960s, starring Vyacheslav Tikhonov and Ludmila Savelyeva, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for its acclaimed battle scenes.
