(It didn’t help that he was known to be mercurial and difficult to work with.) He spent a year casting the film, and was obsessed with historical accuracy in the production. “This was going to be a very prestigious project,” said Denise Youngblood, an emeritus professor from the University of Vermont and the author of the book “ Bondarchuk’s War and Peace: Literary Classic to Soviet Cinematic Epic.”īondarchuk, a seasoned actor who had only one directing credit to his name, was chosen to direct, which confused many in the Soviet film community and led to resentment that would dog him for the rest of his life.
The Soviet state bristled at the success of Vidor’s film - Tolstoy’s novel, after all, is a national treasure - so it commissioned what it hoped would be a bigger, better adaptation from Mosfilms, one of the country’s oldest and most respected studios. As part of a cultural exchange program, King Vidor’s 1956 Hollywood adaptation, starring Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda, was brought to the Soviet Union, where millions of people saw it. Bondarchuk’s “War and Peace” owes some of its splendor to the Cold War.
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