Saturday, December 28, 2013

War and Peace 1977 BBC Movie

Story by:  Leo Tolstoy
Movie by BBC 1972
Rated 5++++++
15 hours long

I watched this on U-Tube and I finished it this morning.  I meant to watch it in slow stages but by episode 8 the story had such a grip on my attention that I just had to finish.

I am so grateful to my Friend Connie for mentioning the W&P movies in Bookflurries.  It just never occurred to me before that there was a movie.  How stupid is that?

It really bothered me that I hadn't been able to finish the book.  It went beyond W&P its self and into a more personal feeling of failure.  Now I can comfort myself by thinking the medium was to blame not the story.  I can see now how being in Pierre's stream of consiousness would chase me right out of the book.  I loved him as a character, and Anthony Hopkins did a wonderful job of playing him, but any more of his philosophizing than was in the movie would have put me to sleep. All of the casting in this movie was just brilliant.

Anyway, thanks for the nudge Connie.  It felt good to finally check W&P off  my to-do list.


  • War and Peace is a television dramatization of the Leo Tolstoy novel of War and Peace. This 20 episode series began on 28 September 1972. The BBC dramatisation of Tolstoy's epic story of love and loss set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars. Anthony Hopkins heads the cast as the soul-searching Pierre Bezukhov, Morag Hood is the impulsive and beautiful Natasha Rostova, Alan Dobie is the dour, heroic Andrei Bolkonsky and David Swift is Napoleon, whose decision to invade Russia in 1812 has far-reaching consequences for Pierre and the Rostov and Bolkonsky families.