KWSAN REVIEWS
FILMS: An Ungainly Monster
By RICHARD GEARY Assistant Arts & Reviews Editor
Six years of shooting and 100 million dollars are behind the Soviet Union's massive production of "War and Peace." The effort must have been like a dinosaur giving birth. The original version was almost eight hours long, and even now, trimmed to $6\frac{1}{2}$ for American audiences, the film is an ungainly monster.
It was undoubtedly a labor of love, though; evidently every frame was handled with utmost care. The Russians knew that this was "their" masterpiece of world literature, and they treated it with all the majesty and seriousness and respect it demanded. The only problem is that they neglected to give it any life.
Tolstoy's novel is a vast but incredibly detailed panorama of human experience; the movie has the vastness, some of the detail, but the human experience is missing. Though hundreds of thousands of people parade by onscreen, we become truly intimate with none of them. They are merely mannikins spouting lines, and we can only hope for a battle scene to come in at the right moment to relieve the dullness.
Of course, the medium itself is responsible much of the time for the War being more entertaining than the Peace, but the bulk of the blame must fall right into the lap of the director, Sergei Bondarchuk. It takes a special knack to make long films that very few directors have; a sense of rhythm and unity of style are essential. Bondarchuk tries very hard to integrate the spectacular and personal elements of the story but the task is beyond him. In seeming desperation, he produces a veritable grab-bag of "technique"—watch closely and you'll see everything: slow motion, split screen, hand-held camera, frozen frames, sweeping crane shots, monochromatic sequences, along with many soulful views of sky, landscape and blowing leaves. These effects are supposed to make the production more "cinematic," but their artificiality makes it all the more stiffly literary.
The director dwells upon his images until they lose whatever subtlety they had, and all we are left with is a series of grandiose illustrations.
Bondarchuk also co-wrote the screenplay, so to him too must fall the blame for the dismal lack of characterization. The dialogue, the interior monologues, the lengthy passages from the novel head by a narrator all tell us that these people are thinking, feeling and changing, but we can never tell by looking at them. The actors go through the motions of their parts, as dictated by the novel, but there is nothing inside them. One suspects that the Soviet Political philosophy is largely behind the unwillingness to give any real life to individual characters.
The dubbing, too, puts a formidable wall between us and the people onscreen. Dubbing is inexcusable under any circumstances, but doubly so in "War and Peace" because it is so bad—the voices seem to be reading from the telephone directory.
This cumbersome, inert mammoth of a movie does have its interesting moments. One remembers certain scenes such as the elegantly filmed grand ball, where Natasha meets Andrei, the Battle of Borodino, which lasts forever, the brief friendship between Pierre and a French officer, and the burning of Moscow, seen through a storm of cinders. Individual images come to mind also; the introduction of Natasha in a torrent of blinding light and a series of quick cuts; the exchange of looks between Natasha's uncle and a captured wolf after a hunt; the endless lines of cannon at Borodino firing in rapid succession; the slow motion murder of a boy by a firing squad. Memorable moments, but what a wait!
"MARRY ME, MARRY ME"
A gentle French comedy from Claude Berri, who made "The Two of Us."
"THE REIVERS" — Delightful tale of a lad's loss of innocence in the South at the turn of the century. Steve McQueen is at his best.
The Weekend Scene
"WAR AND PEACE" Part II—
See review this page.
"PUTNEY SWOPE" - Underground film - maker Robert Downey's first legitimate effort about the Black Revolution in a Madison Ave. ad agency. It is generally inept, but succeeds in getting a few laughs from its subject.
“DR. ZHIVAGO” — David Lean's 1965 adaptation of the Pasternak novel is somewhat entertaining but never goes deeper than high-style soap opera.
"SHIP OF FOOLS" (SUA Popular Film—Friday and Saturday) —Stanley Kramer's 1965 pseudo-symbolic, pseudo-drama. The biggest waste of gifted stars since his own "Mad World" the year before.
"THE HOMECOMING" (theater production) - An excellent play of the contemporary theatre by Harold Pinter with outstanding examples of fine acting and directing and an authentic set.
NO WAY-AT ALL
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