War and Peace (Bondarchuk, 1966-67): Curzon Renoir, 10am
Here is the introduction to a special screening: Curzon Cinemas is proud to welcome À Nos Amours, a new collective
founded by filmmakers Joanna Hogg and Adam Roberts dedicated to
programming over-looked, under-exposed or especially potent cinema. To
find out more about the collective, please check ANosAmours.co.uk.
Roger Ebert has said has said of Sergei Bondarchuk's film, “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 splendid movie.”
It took seven years to make (shooting
lasted from 1961 to 1967). One battle scene alone required 120,000
extras. 35,000 costumes were needed. Sergie Bondarchuk was nothing if
not ambitious. Adapted from Leo Tolstoy’s novel of the same name, A Nos
Amours will present the four parts over one glorious day, including
three short intervals.
This just in (on Friday 5 Oct): A Nos Amours is delighted to announce that Susan Larsen will introduce War & Peace on Sunday. Susan Larsen, Lecturer in Slavonic Studies at Cambridge University,
teaches courses that address both the works of Tolstoy and the history
of Soviet and post-Soviet cinema, although not usually in the same
lecture! She has written on Russian cinema before and after perestroika,
specifically the work of Kira Muratova, Nikita Mikhalkov and Aleksei
Balabanov. Her current project on Soviet cinema during the Thaw devotes
particular attention to the early career of Sergei Bondarchuk.
Chicago Reader review:
'Sergei Bondarchuk's kitschy, epic 1967 adaptation of the Tolstoy novel
is the most expensive movie ever made, and though it can be bombastic
and mind-numbing, it's often lively and eye filling. The balls and
battle scenes are monumental, and Bondarchuk (who plays the bumbling
Pierre, as Orson Welles would have in the 40s if he'd realized his own
version with Alexander Korda) moves his camera a lot, incorporating some
expressive 60s-style flourishes. Even at 415 minutes (over an hour
shorter than the Soviet release) this rarely suggests the vision behind
the set pieces or populist polemics; Tolstoy's feeling for incidental
detail is more evident in non-Tolstoyan films like The Leopard and The Magnificent Ambersons. This is a landmark in the history of commerce and post-Stalinist Russia, but not cinema.' Jonathan Rosenbaum
You can get a flavour of the film here but this really demands to be seen on the big screen and this is a great opportunity to do just that.
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