Synopsis
War and Peace (1956) is King Vidor's Hollywood adaptation of Tolstoy's novel — watch it online on iFILM. Produced by Dino De Laurentiis across a US-Italian co-production running 208 minutes, the film stars Audrey Hepburn as Natasha Rostova, Henry Fonda as Pierre Bezukhov, and Mel Ferrer as Andrei Bolkonsky.
Napoleon's march into Russia in 1812 frames three intertwined lives. Natasha moves from ballrooms to grief with a speed that catches you off guard. Pierre stumbles through Freemasonry, a botched duel and eventually captivity, looking for something he can't name. Andrei carries the particular exhaustion of a man who has already seen through most things. The battles — Austerlitz, Borodino, the burning of Moscow — are staged at a scale that was genuinely rare for 1956.
Hepburn was up for the Golden Globe for her performance here, and the film competed for the Academy Award the same year. By today's standards it wears its era — ceremonious, wide-screen, in love with spectacle — but Hepburn and Fonda pull it past illustration into something with actual feeling. Watch War and Peace (1956) online on iFILM.
Starring
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