War and Peace

(King Vidor, US/Italy 1956, 208 min., 35mm)

Period Dramas. This elegant Hollywood production was the first English-language version of Leo Tolstoy’s Russian epic. The film, notably condensed from Tolstoy’s tome, concerns two intertwined aristocratic Russian families during the era of Napoleon’s ill-fated 1812 invasion, starring screen greats Henry Fonda as the intellectual Pierre Bezukhov and Audrey Hepburn as the eminent object of desire Natasha Rostova. Veteran director King Vidor’s penultimate feature uses remarkably lavish footage of the Italian countryside as a substitute for the story’s war-ravaged Russia.