"War and Peace"
1956
Starring Henry Fonda and Audrey Hepburn
208 minutes

This is the Amerikan movie version of Leo Tolstoy's monumental
fiction book, often considered the greatest of all time.
In cutting the tale back to 208 minutes of movie, the director
chose to eliminate most of the political discussions and highlight the romances.

"War and Peace" depicts the Napoleonic invasion of Europe including
Russia between 1805 and 1812. A severe drawback of the film is that
it only gives details on life in the upper class of Russia. We do not
see the details of the lives of slaves, even as they fight against
Napoleon. The Russian military appears as colorful and well-organized
as the French, so we see no particular Russian character to the war,
thanks to the lack of attention to historical detail.

The old-fashioned question of wimmin taking advantage of faithful men
and trusting wimmin falling for roguish men who break up marital
engagements for a whim occupies the film. Audrey Hepburn's character
grows up and plays the part of the naive womyn who needs forgiveness
for straying from her love for a rogue. Henry Fonda plays the good friend
Pierre (named with a French name as was common in the Russian
ruling class) who protects wimmin from their own naivete. Somehow there are both men
and wimmin who use sex to abuse other people instead of staying among their
kind, where presumably loose romantic attachment would be the norm.
Admittedly, the fact that they do not stay among their kind proves
that their interest in romance is power over the unsuspecting--not
sex for its own sake. All of this
is rather un-Russian, common and the boring substance of too many movies.
It might be useful to show a class of 11 year-olds such a movie for purposes
of sex education. That is pretty much the only value I can see for the movie
today.

We dismiss the film and turn to the subject matter it missed, the possibilities
that could have been explored. A question of real interest arises in why the slaves fought to
keep Russia in its present state while Napoleon was freeing slaves
and ending serfdom as he traipsed through Europe. The Amerikanized
version of "War and Peace" does not touch the question.

To what extent the Russian people even had a consciousness of nationality would
be another interesting question to explore since the vast majority were
poorly educated and in horrible economic conditions. Although Russia
won the war with Napoleon in 1812, the subsequent "Decembrist revolt" in 
1825 failed to end slavery in Russia. The question arises whether fighting
Napoleon in the name of nationalism while preserving slavery meant that in
practice real Russian nationalism at the time was advocating slavery.
It seems unavoidable that intellectuals failed the people of Russia prior to 1812.
While Poland momentarily shook off serfdom with Napoleon's help and proved it was possible
in Russia too, neighboring Russia still labored
under slavery; yet, the intellectuals failed to prepare Russia for changes
like Poland's in the years leading to Napoleon's invasion.

It is typical now to treat 1812 as a trial run for Hitler's invasion
of 1941. In the 1812 situation the Russian people fought hard
against a more advanced foe, and wiped out about 390,000 out of 400,000
troops. The movie shows us the invasion, the fact that the Russians
burned everything including Moscow so Napoleon would gain nothing from conquest,
the basic question of nationalism in the upper class and the intellectual
pacifism of the main character played by Henry Fonda. We gather that
in key ways militarily-speaking the Russians outsmarted Napoleon but beyond these facts,
the movie does not deliver what is interesting in the history. Russian
smarts in military matters may well have outpaced their advances in other areas.

Without taking an official MIM stance on the "Napoleonic Wars" of 
the early 1800s, we should at least point out some of what Marx, Engels
and Lenin said. Lenin and Stalin made a number of favorable references to
1812 and the Russian defeat of Napoleon. Yet the context of Lenin and Stalin
was bending their efforts toward defending the first socialist state against
imperialist invaders both in the 1920s and in 1941. They told the Soviet
peoples that they won war before and they can do it again now that the
state is socialist.

In 1849, Engels intervened in some conflicts 
between the Magyars and the Slavs about German 
influence --with the Magyars being disposed to 
Germanic influence and the Slavic peoples 
sometimes opposing: "We are far from denying the 
shameful part played by the Germans in the 
shameful wars against the French revolution from 
1792 to 1815, and in the oppression of Italy since 
1815 and of Poland since 1772; but who stood 
behind the Germans, who used them as their 
mercenaries or their vanguard? England and ITAL 
Russia.END After all, up to the present day the 
Russians boast of having brought about the fall of 
Napoleon through their innumerable armies, which 
is at any rate largely correct. This much, at 
least, is certain, that of the armies which by 
their superior power drove back Napoleon from the 
Oder as far as Paris, three-quarters consisted of 
Slavs, Russians or Austrian Slavs."

Prior to that, Engels said, "The Slavs — once 
again we remind our readers that here we always 
exclude the Poles — were always the main 
instruments of the counter-revolutionaries. 
Oppressed at home, outside their country, wherever 
Slav influence extended to, they were the 
oppressors of all revolutionary nations." People 
failing to understand dialectical materialism 
might have thought Engels had something against 
the Slavic peoples including Russians--but not at 
all. "If at any epoch while they were oppressed the 
Slavs had begun a ITAL new revolutionary history, END that 
by itself would have proved their viability. From 
that moment the revolution would have had an 
interest in their liberation, and the special 
interest of the Germans and Magyars would have 
given way to the greater interest of the European 
revolution." In other words, Engels was saying that
the nationalisms of the revolutionary should take precedence
over the nationalisms of the counter-revolutionary.
We can well see that Engels would have supported putting
the Soviet state first amongst states after 1917.

Thus there are two separate questions: 1) How to use 1812 once it
happened to positive benefit. 2) Whether or not the Russian people
should have opposed Napoleon in 1812. According to Engels,
it was counter-revolutionaries holding back history who fought
Napoleon.

If we were to turn to the dates 1805 to 1812, should not the intellectuals
have prepared the slaves of Russia for their liberation? Should the
Russian slaves have fought on Napoleon's side? What meaning could it
have to a slave to be a "conquered" citizen of Russia? How can a citizen
be reduced anymore below slavery except by genocide--which Napoleon proved was
not his aim, unlike Hitler. Why not count the French as "Russians" if that is what it took to
end slavery and if concepts of nationhood were just forming.

Inevitably, films about distant historical times focus greatly on
costumes, manners and context. Without vast resources and historical
energy, the depiction of the masses of workers and peasants usually
suffers in films produced in the capitalist system. That is the case
here.

This is especially the case in a whole host of films about the past produced
in the first 50 years of bourgeois film making. Dimly but warmly lit sets are
supposed to evoke a feeling for the past that are typical for a whole swath of films.

Rather than evoke warm feelings of a past misconstrued by bourgeois film directors,
films should aim at the conflicts and driving forces of the times. "War and Peace"
focussed too much on the Russian ruling class and missed out on the essentials of the time.

Note:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1849/02/15.htm