war and peace. movie version.

after finishing, "war and peace" i decided to see if there was a mini-series to check out. didn't find one but found the 1956 movie starring audrey hepburn.

i will say that once i saw the cover i knew that audrey would do well as natasha. she did make a lovely natasha. she had the beauty and the spunk of tolstoy's character. she was everything i imagined natasha to be. another great casting was mel ferrer as prince andrei. he was handsome, noble, loving and at times oddly cold. all of the casting was great, helene was beautiful, mayra was not as pretty, kutuzov was fat and old, and all of the men were handsome!!

but i didn't agree with all of the casting. i envisioned old prince bolkonsky fatter. napoleon was way too tall, he needed to be shorter. sadly, i did not like henry fonda as pierre. he just didn't seem like pierre to me, there is vulnerability and uncertainty to pierre that fonda did not project. i have no idea who would do better as pierre, i just didn't see fonda as pierre.

so when i first saw the cover, i assumed that hollywood probably condensed tolstoy's epic into a two hour romance, focusing on the pierre, natasha, prince andrei love triangle. however they didn't! it was actually 208 minutes and the whole novel was covered. some things were cut out or edited but for the most part the whole book was covered. all of the major story lines were there. i will admit that toward the end i started to get bored but that was because it was the war part.

there were some parts that i wished would have stayed true to the book.

-countess rostov's disapproval of nikolai and sonya's romance. they sure did a lot of kissing in front of his family.

-dolokhov's storyline needed to include the fact that he was living with pierre and pierre's close friend when he had his affair with helene.

-pierre's uncertainty about his love for helene. it seemed as if pierre was in love with helene. also it needed to be shown that her family forced him to marry her.

-natasha needed to be more sickly and grief-stricken after her incident with anatol.

-prince andrei's kid was way too young.

-natasha and pierre's ending was way too hollywood.

-and since i loved it so, the nikolai and marya meeting and story.

all in all, i think it is a good adaptation and individuals who don't read or don't want to read the book should check it out.