War and Peace

Compared to this 70mm monster (five years in the making, and running 507 minutes in its original Russian version), most other epics have the visual dimensions of an Edgar Wallace potboiler. Battles, duels, ballroom scenes, and even trips in a troika are staged with unsparing picturesqueness; at the battle of Borodino, a staggering twenty thousand extras mill around the cannons, smoke, and horses. But spectacle apart, Bondarchuk's version of Tolstoy falls into the category of respectable mediocrity, and matters aren't helped by the loud American voices with which everyone speaks in this much-edited and dubbed version. As a movie excursion into Russian literature, Love and Death still wins hands down.