Movie · 1956 · War, Romance, Drama, History · 3h 28m · PG · English
Curator score: 4.0/10 (22K ratings)
The greatest novel ever written ... Now magnificently alive on the screen!
Overview
The love story of young Countess Natasha Rostova and Count Pierre Bezukhov is interwoven with the Great Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon's invading army.
Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Mel Ferrer, Vittorio Gassman, Herbert Lom, Oskar Homolka, Anita Ekberg, Barry Jones, May Britt, Jeremy Brett, John Mills, Helmut Dantine, Tullio Carminati, Milly Vitale, Lea Seidl, Anna Maria Ferrero, Wilfrid Lawson, Patrick Crean, Sean Barrett, Gertrude Flynn
Curator Review
Verdict
A grand, old-school adaptation with real spectacle and a strong romantic core, but it’s also famously long, unevenly paced, and more impressive in scale than consistently absorbing. Best approached as a prestige historical epic rather than a streamlined novel adaptation.
Best for
viewers who enjoy sweeping historical epics
fans of classic Hollywood spectacle
audiences interested in romance set against war
people who don’t mind slow, stately pacing
admirers of Audrey Hepburn or Henry Fonda
Skip if
you want a brisk, tightly edited epic
you’re impatient with long dialogue-heavy passages
you prefer modern action-forward war films
you need a faithful, fully immersive Tolstoy adaptation without compromise
Overview
King Vidor’s War and Peace is a lavish, serious-minded attempt to turn Tolstoy into widescreen spectacle. Its strongest asset is scale: the battle sequences, costumes, and period atmosphere give the film a sense of grandeur that still registers, even when the storytelling feels compressed or episodic. The romance and moral searching are treated with real earnestness, which helps anchor the film’s more formal, literary stretches.
Worth noting
At the same time, the movie’s length is not just a joke; it’s part of the experience. The pacing can feel heavy, and the adaptation inevitably simplifies a novel that resists simplification. Some viewers will be swept up by the stateliness, while others will feel the film’s momentum sag whenever it moves away from the most emotionally immediate material.
Bottom line
What remains most compelling is the contrast between private longing and public catastrophe. The film is less a perfect adaptation than a monumental artifact: ambitious, handsome, and occasionally moving, even when it overreaches. If you’re in the mood for a classic epic that values grandeur over speed, it’s worth the journey.
Top Letterboxd reviews
russman (2★) · 487 likes
This movie's run time may have been as long as the actual war
james (3★) · 320 likes
the things i do for audrey hepburn.
charlotte (3.5★) · 210 likes
can natasha just sit down and like, reflect for 2 minutes
alaina (1.5★) · 124 likes
I dissociated like 69420 times watching this.
Will Steele (3★) · 100 likes
Unsurprisingly long-winded, but the sheer scale of the battle scenes do give this adaptation such utter verisimilitude that you forget you’re watching fiction...until you spot Henry Fonda amongst the cannons and bayonets.