Watch War and Peace The Splendid, Epic Film Adaptation of Leo Tolstoys Grand Novel 1. Theres an old axiom that mediocre books make great movies and great books make for lousy movies. Mario Puzos bestseller The Godfather is a straightforward potboiler but Francis Ford Coppola spun it into one of the best films ever made. In contrast, F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby has beguiled multiple ambitious, misguided filmmakers into making cinematic duds. Hollywoods 1. 95. Leo Tolstoys famously massive tome War and Peace proved that axiom to be true. Director King Vidor, who generally speaking is no slouch when it comes to directing epics, just couldnt translate the novels sweep and depth. Moreover, the films leads, Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda, just seemed miscast. New York Times critic Bosley Crowther described the movie as oddly mechanical and emotionally sterile. The movie was also an affront to Russian nationalism. After all, Tolstoys novel is not just another historical epic it is a cultural lodestone for what is Russian ness. It is, as Rosemary Edmonds, a translator of the 1. Iliad and the Odyssey of Russia. The Soviet film industry couldnt let some half baked Hollywood flick end up being the sole cinematic adaptation of the book. Making an adaptation was, as a bunch of Soviet filmmakers wrote in an open letter, a matter of honor for the Soviet cinema industry. After decades of making stolid propaganda pieces that more often than not involved tractors, the Soviet film industry was fired up to make a work that was faithful to Tolstoy and yet have artistic merit as a movie a tall order. As the director and star of the Russian version of War and Peace, Sergei Bondarchuk, put it Our duty is to introduce the future viewer to the origins of sublime art, to make the innermost mysteries of the novel, War and Peace, visually tangible, to inform a feeling of fullness of life, of the joy of human experience. The Soviet government marshaled a staggering amount of effort and expense to realize this film. Never underestimate the will of a totalitarian dictatorship with an axe to grind. Production started in 1. More than forty different museums contributed costumes and set dressing to the production, including things like chandeliers, silverware and furniture. The Department of Agriculture contributed 9. The Red Army had 1. The Flash Season 1 Episode 19 S1E19 Who Is Harrison Wells Full Episode Online Watch The Flash Season 1 Episode 19 S1E19 Who Is Harrison Wells WWE SmackDown Live 41817. Watch WWE SmackDown Live 41817 Online 18th April 2017 Full Show Free 720p HD Live stream, Dailymotion Live 10 Parts Stream during live. Watch Online Free Movie Watch Movie Online Free Download Full Movie Streaming Watch Online Movie. Download full movie online. Rugrats 3x17 Mommys Little Assets Chuckies Wonderful Life Ookler DSR Encode by King Best. Battle of Borodino sequence. Bondarchuk suffered two near fatal heart attacks during production. All that money and effort paid off. The resulting movie was one of the most lavish, spectacular films ever made. And at 4. 51 minutes, its also one of the longest. It was released in the USSR as four separate movies. Along the way, Bondarchuk pulled off the impossible the movie is actually good, mirroring the breadth and depth of the novel. War and Peace won all sorts of awards including an Oscar for Best Foreign language movie. As a young Roger Ebert raved back in 1. O7rL7/x360-fs-.jpg' alt='Watch The Wake Dailymotion' title='Watch The Wake Dailymotion' />War and Peace is the definitive epic of all time. It is hard to imagine that circumstances will ever again combine to make a more spectacular, expensive, and yes splendid movie. Perhaps thats just as well epics seem to be going out of favor, replaced instead by smaller, more personal films. Perhaps this greatest of the epics will be one of the last, bringing the epic form to its ultimate statement and at the same time supplying the epitaph. You can watch a small section of the film above. But to watch the complete film online, in better resolution, click these links Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4. Or watch them all in this playlist. The film lives now on Youtube thanks to Mosfilm, the great Russian film studio. And if you need subtitles, click CC at the bottom of the videos. Bondarchuks War and Peace, which you can also purchase online, is listed in our collection, 1,1. Watch The Wake Dailymotion' title='Watch The Wake Dailymotion' />Free Movies Online Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns, etc. Related Content Rare Recording Leo Tolstoy Reads From His Last Major Work in Four Languages, 1. Vintage Footage of Leo Tolstoy Video Captures the Great Novelist During His Final Days. The Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy Online New Archive Will Present 9. Volumes for Free in RussianLeo Tolstoys Family Recipe for Macaroni and Cheese. Jonathan Crow is a Los Angeles based writer and filmmaker whose work has appeared in Yahoo, The Hollywood Reporter, and other publications. You can follow him at jonccrow. And check out his blog Veeptopus, featuring pictures of vice presidents with octopuses on their heads. The Veeptopus store is here. Watch The Dog Lover Online Forbes.