'There remains the greatest of all novelists-for what else can we call the author of War And Peace? [Tolstoy's] senses, his intellect, are acute, powerful, and well nourished...Nothing seems to escape him. Nothing glances off him unrecorded...Every twig, every feather sticks to his magnet. He notices the blue or red of a child's frock; the way a horse shifts its tail; the sound of a cough; the action of a man trying to put his hands into pockets that...

Painstakingly detailed adaptation of the Tolstoy novel of the Napoleonic invasion of Russia.

Set during Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812, the film centers around disenchanted aristocrat and unhappily married Pierre and Prince Andrei, who both are in love with an innocent young woman, Natasha.

A sixteen-year-old farmhand is tricked into fighting in the Napoleonic Wars by the farmer for whom he works, who secretly substitutes him for the farmer's own son.

A history of Napoleon's invasion of Russia describes the events that prompted the invasion and recounts how such factors as the harsh climate and Russian patriotism eventually set the stage for Napoleon's downfall.