Do you have seven hours to spare for one of the absolute masterpieces in film history? The four-part literary adaptation War and Peace by Sergey Bondarchuk is exactly that. Equipped with almost unlimited resources, thousands of extras and tons of gunpowder, it tells the stirring story of three fates during the Napoleonic Wars.
You can currently stream all four parts ad-free and free of charge (more on this below). This much has already been revealed: you can expect it one of the greatest battles ever captured on film.
The war epic made history: 12,000 extras and 23 tons of gunpowder were used in a battle
The story begins in 1805 in St. Petersburg. Over several years, it takes us from the ballrooms of the Russian nobility to the battlefields of Europe, where Napoleon’s armies confront the ancestral monarchies.
We experience the great historical waves alongside three main characters. On the one hand, there is Prince Andrei Bolkonski (Vyacheslav Tikhonov), who admires Napoleon and wants to prove himself as his opponent on the battlefield. His best friend is Pierre Bezukhow (Bondarchuk); because of his origins and his nature, the intellectual is an outsider until a sudden inheritance turns his situation upside down.
And then there is the young Natascha Rostova (Lyudmila Saveleva), whom we meet as a girl and follow through great love and disappointment into adulthood. The shadow of the French emperor hangs over everyone, and at some point he will reach for Russian territory.
The Battle of Borodino is unparalleled to this day
Leo Tolstoy’s novel is considered one of the classics of world literature. Because of its large ensemble of characters, time frame and attention to detail, it regularly pushes filmmakers to their (budget) limits. Actor and director Sergey Bondarchuk took on the project in 1960. He was supported by the Soviet Ministry of Culture. You can see in every second scene that a lot of government funding was used to make it happen.
Alone Around 12,000 extras were used for the Battle of Borodinowhile 23 tons of gunpowder were torched by specialists. This makes it one of the greatest movie battles of all. Anyone who is used to the computer-generated armies of our blockbuster era will experience their blue-green wonder.
War and Peace was also intended to show the world what the Soviet film industry was capable of. Nevertheless, the film series, which is over 400 minutes long, never seems like cumbersome propaganda. This is partly due to Bondarchuk’s freewheeling instincts as a director. We fly with the camera over the battlefield like cannonballstake the perspective of dying soldiers and rise above the destructive horror like the souls of those who have fallen.
The joy of experimentation and verve also permeate the rest of the running time, which breathes additional life into the historical epic about disappointing love affairs and social constraints. At the beginning you might watch War and Peace because of the battles, but after a few hours you’ll be excited because of Andrei, Pierre and Natascha.
So you can watch War and Peace now
War and Peace is currently free on offer at the Arte media library ready for retrieval. The epic is listed in four parts, which build on each other chronologically. They are available in the original version with German subtitles.
The parts are listed in the media library without their internationally common titles, but as a series (part 1/4, 2/4, etc.). These are:
You have until June 2025 to catch up on the best film adaptation of Tolstoy’s novel in the media library.