A Hollywood Epic That Required 18,000 Soldiers and a Five-Hundred-Page Screenplay
In short: King Vidor’s 1956 adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was a logistical titan, employing thousands of Italian military personnel as extras and requiring a massive, sprawling script. Despite its scale and star-studded cast, the production was plagued by behind-the-scenes clashes, casting controversies, and a reception that remains sharply divided today.
The 1956 production of War and Peace was a monumental undertaking, driven by Italian producers Dino De Laurentiis and Carlo Ponti. To capture the scale of the Napoleonic invasion, the team utilized 18,000 Italian military personnel as extras and reproduced over 100,000 period-accurate costumes and hairpieces. The sheer volume of the endeavor was reflected in its screenplay, which began as a 506-page draft—roughly five times the length of a standard script—before undergoing extensive revisions by Vidor and his wife, Elizabeth Hill.
Casting decisions sparked significant friction. Audrey Hepburn, a global star, was secured for the role of Natasha with a record salary of $350,000, which granted her creative control over her costume fitter and makeup artist. Conversely, Henry Fonda’s casting as the 20-year-old Pierre Bezukhov was widely criticized as a poor fit, given that he was 50 at the time. Tensions boiled over on set, particularly between Fonda and De Laurentiis, who demanded the actor play Pierre as a conventional romantic lead and forbade him from wearing his signature eyeglasses.
Upon its 1956 release, the film received a polarized response. Critics like Bosley Crowther of The New York Times lauded the film's visual massiveness but dismissed the characters as shallow, while others felt the narrative was too truncated to capture the soul of Tolstoy’s 1869 novel. Despite these critiques, the film achieved significant international reach, selling over 31 million tickets in the Soviet Union alone after its 1959 release. Its legacy is complex; while it earned Academy Award nominations for directing, cinematography, and costume design, it is often remembered as a massive, if imperfect, attempt to translate a literary giant into a cinematic spectacle.
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- Summary by Intellect · source: War and Peace (1956 film)
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