War and Peace
WarandPeace
Director: Sergey Bondarchuk
Screenwriter: Sergei Bondarchuk/Vasily Solovyov/Leo Tolstoy
Starring: Sergei Bondarchuk/Lyudmila Saviryeva/Vyacheslav Tikhonov
Genre: plot/love/history/war
Production Country/Region: Soviet Union
Language: Russian/German/French
Text/Deep Focus Editorial Department
The films screened at this Beijing International Film Festival are splendid, and the most interesting is the seven-hour restored version of "War and Peace" (Voynaimir, 1966). The film will also be screened at the China Film Archive on the 30th of this month. The audience will still have the opportunity to feast their eyes on a poignant love story and magnificent war scenes on the big screen. This film is adapted from Leo Tolstoy’s literary work of the same name and directed by former Soviet director Sergei Bondarchuk. It is worth mentioning that Bondarchuk also contributed wonderful acting skills in the film, playing the protagonist Pierre Bezukhov (Pierre Bezukhov).
In fact, Hollywood has put this great work on stage long before the Soviet version of "War and Peace". "War and Peace" directed by director King Vidor was a weapon used by the United States against the Soviet Union in the field of culture and propaganda during the Cold War. The purpose of its filming was basically to prove to the Soviet Union that the United States is richer. In February 1961, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union received a joint letter from scientists, cultural figures, and military generals. They complained that the Americans had stolen their cultural heritage and protested that the US version of "War and Peace" was on the Soviet screen. Released. The Soviet authorities also took this matter seriously, so they handed over the plan to the then Minister of Culture Yekaterina Furtseva (Yekaterina Furtseva, formerly the first secretary of the Moscow City Committee). Under such circumstances, a nationally filmed "War and Peace" aimed at confronting the United States can be said to have come into being.
Thanks to the support of the Soviet authorities, director Sergey Bondarchuk can use not only the resources of a Moscow film studio, but all the resources of the entire Soviet Union, because the success or failure of this film is related to the softness of the country during the Cold War. Show of strength and face. In fact, there has never been an exact figure for how much this movie cost, especially with the unprecedented use of national resources (and many of them are free). For example, the 12,000 extras used in the film were completely cost-free, which was completely impossible in the United States or any other country at the time.
For this reason, Bondarchuk is not only ambitious, but also capable of showing his attitude of excellence. His requirements for the production process are very precise and demanding. For example, he specially invited a hair stylist from Paris to make makeup and hair for the scene of the Natasha Prom. design. In this regard, the then Minister of Culture Foltseva also gave the greatest degree of support, requesting national historical museums and archives to provide support and assistance in filming. The 58 museums that received the order provided a large amount of furniture, paintings, tableware, etc. Decorations, sabers and guns used on the battlefield, etc.
In addition, thousands of ordinary people donated their personal belongings to the crew for filming. According to the members of the crew at the time, almost all the jewelry used in the film was obtained through this channel. All of these provide a real historical texture that cannot be replicated for the filming, just as "The Last Emperor" filmed in the Forbidden City cannot be compared with other Forbidden City movies filmed in the Forbidden City. Of course, a large amount of historical donations does not mean that the work of the costume and prop team has become collection and sorting: they also need to produce a large number of costumes, cannons, etc. for the crew, of which 9,000 sets of military uniforms are produced, and civilian costumes. There are as many as 3000 sets.
It can be said that all of the above show the "system superiority" of the Soviet Union. If it were not for the national system, such a movie would definitely not be made. However, the filming process also faces many difficulties, and the external environment of film creation is not simple. You must know that the Soviet political system can provide various convenient conditions for filming on the one hand, but on the other hand it is also creating various troubles for the scriptwriter and filming of films. For example, the military intervenes. During the script creation process, official commentators also interfered in the script creation, demanding that some scenes be deleted and others added, and so on. The director Bondarchuk had to leave the studio to handle some administrative affairs during the filming. In March 1963, he went to Moscow to attend a meeting organized by the Soviet government. The progress of the filming was drastically slowed down. From March 15 to April 3, the film was shot for only 6 days. During this period, the average daily completed film was only 5.6 meters, but the daily cost was 120,000 rubles.
In terms of production, the film also faced various complex problems. For example, the casting was revised several times (and the opinions of the Soviet bureaucracy had to be taken care of), and the filming team also faced the replacement of important personnel several times. Photographers Aleksander Shelenkov (Aleksander Shelenkov) and Yolanda Chen (Iolanda Chen) retired from the crew shortly after the filming began, complaining that the director Bondarchuk was extremely dictatorial on the set, emphasizing that the “primitive joy of their work has been lost”. To be consumed and exhausted". After that, the 31-year-old second photographer Anatoly Petrisky (Anatoly Petrisky), who had almost no experience as a director of photography, drove the ducks to the shelves and took over this important task. From the final result, Petzky It did not disappoint everyone's hopes. However, Bondarchuk’s relationship with him was not very good. After filming the scenes of the Natasha Prom, Petzki even prepared to quit his job, but in the end he was still forced by higher pressure ("not filming I won’t find a job again”) stayed in the position.
These are not the most worrying. One of the biggest challenges in the filming process may still come from the 70mm film itself. According to Petzki's recollection, the quality of the film at that time was staggering. Mosquitoes frequently appeared in the photosensitive emulsion, and the film perforations often failed to bite. The quality of the Soviet-made 70mm camera is also worrying, and vignetting and ghosting are always difficult to eliminate. Because the quality of Soviet-made 70mm film is really worrying, and the cost of importing American film is too high, re-shooting and multiple shooting have become commonplace during filming. Some estimates believe that the overall production cost of the film has increased by 10%-15% due to film quality issues. . Some scenes that cannot be retaken are particularly frightening. For example, a French army robbed Moscow City. Petzki was extremely worried that the film would melt due to the high temperature at the scene. If there is a problem, this scene is absolutely impossible to replicate. The shooting of the scene was unexpectedly smooth, and the aerial photography of the plane and helicopter was also carried out in an orderly manner.
The other big challenge facing the filming process came from the director's own body: In July 64, the director received an instruction from his superiors to do his best to post-production of the parts that have been filmed, and to prepare for the Moscow Film Festival in the coming year. That month, Bondarchuk was watching a screening of the movie "I Am Cuba" directed by Mikhail Karatozov. He suffered a heart attack and died clinically. It took two hours for the doctor to He snatched it back from death. In May of the following year, the first two parts of the film were screened at the Moscow Film Festival. In July, Bondarchuk suffered a heart attack again, and this time he died of a clinical illness for nearly 4 minutes. Bondarchuk, who was rescued back, used his near-death experience in the movie: the figure walking on the white wall and a series of images that Bolkonski saw before his death were all from the director's own eyes. See, feel personally.
Despite all the twists and turns, the film was finally produced and released, not only in the former Soviet Union, but also internationally. The film won the 41st Oscar Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1969, which is extremely special and rare for a Soviet film, especially a Soviet film during the Cold War. The following reasons cannot be ignored: First of all, the world literary masterpiece "War and Peace" adapted from the film is the common literary heritage of the whole world, while the Bondarchuk edition is a comparison of Leo Tolstoy's original work. The adaptation and fidelity of "War and Peace" is obviously higher than that of "War and Peace" produced in the United States;
Secondly, the film is superior in terms of structure and shooting techniques, which is precisely what Hollywood stylized film production lacks. For example, Bondarchuk and his photographers minimize the use of close-ups, and use them more often. The scenery, panorama, and grand panorama show the life of the Russian nobles and the vast natural environment, making the film present an epic style of group portraits, which not only conforms to the characteristics of local culture, but also satisfies the Soviet authorities' promotion of the protection of the family through "War and Peace" The requirement of the patriotic spirit of the Patriotic State has also subverted to some extent the main body of audiovisual language composed of close-ups and front and back shots in Hollywood movies.
Finally, the production, distribution and award of Bondarchuk's version of "War and Peace" depended on the political climate in the Soviet Union. As a matter of fact, the period from the beginning of the filming to the end of the filming was exactly the transitional period from Khrushchev’s "thawing" period to Brezhnev’s "stagnation" period in the Soviet Union. Therefore, on the one hand, the film has the characteristics of the film during the "thawing" period, that is, it pays attention to audiovisual. More than narrative (the "thawing" of the film lasted until after the "Prague Spring" in 1968), on the other hand, it also emphasized its inherent ideology, that is, the confrontation between patriotism and the Cold War. Therefore, the selection and award of "War and Peace" is not only the need of Soviet propaganda, but also the result of the American Film Academy's affirmation of film art. It is a strong work that has grown between politics and art.
Watching Bondarchuk’s "War and Peace" always reminds people of the work "Andrey Rublyov" (Andrey Rublyov, 1966) by another Soviet director Andrey Tarkovsky in the same period. Many scenes of the two films are extremely similar. For example, in "Andrei Rublev", there is the looting of the Principality of Moscow by the Tatars. Similar scenes are also highlighted in "War and Peace". Come out, but the background of the times has become the time of Napoleon’s invasion. However, the experiences of the two films in the Soviet Union were completely different: Tarkovsky was short of funds and was repeatedly censored during filming, while Bondarchuk received strong support from the state, and his budget was almost available. Infinite to describe. Tarkovsky is also extremely dissatisfied with Bondarchuk: the Soviet authorities have always hoped that the latter can replace the former and become the Soviet Union’s business card in European cinema. In his mouth, the spokesperson and spokesperson of the Soviet government is also He was hostile to him and his works, saying that he tried his best to prevent "Nostalgia" from winning when he was a judge at the Cannes Film Festival. Although we don't know the specific circumstances, this kind of experience did make Tarkovsky choose to go into exile in Western Europe.
Of course, the Soviet Union’s attack on Tasmanian films is not without reason: Although both "War and Peace" and "Andrei Rublev" describe the spirit of the Slavic nation in resisting foreign insults, they both focus on the inner core. The meaning is completely opposite. The former is to show the spirit of patriotism, while the latter is intended to present a kind of inner growth of belief and spiritual power; the former is related to the collective, while the latter focuses on the inner world and spiritual plight of Rublev. In comparison, the former is more in line with the value orientation of mainstream American films, while the latter is closely aligned with the modernist trend of European films in the mid and late 1960s. For this reason, the latter is more favored by European film festivals, and the former is in line with American movies present more complex and subtle interactions.
The foundation of Bondarchuk's version of "War and Peace" lies in Russia's great realism tradition and its rich and inclusive nationality. When Natasha danced in a wooden house, Pierre fought in and out of Moscow. At the scene of the fire, the boundaries between nobles and civilians, and between soldiers and civilians tended to disappear, and the characters merged into a larger historical background. At the end of the film, the camera slowly moves upward, and the vast Russian land is in full view, and then gradually disappears into the clouds. Sergey Bondarchuk tells us that this is a story that happened on Russian soil, and this seems to be just a story. The true feelings of family and country and historical writing are all unfolding on the current stage of reality.
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