The film without the cuts. And the book itself.
As war with Napoleon looms, Petersburg society gossips in Anna Pávlovna’s salon while the fates of three great families begin to entwine.
Pierre Bezukhov
A large, awkward heir moves through salons, marriage, war, captivity, and love searching for a life that feels true.
Anna Pávlovna’s salon
A polished Petersburg room where war first shows up as gossip, ambition, and careful talk.
A salon greeting becomes a loyalty test, with war and friendship suddenly entwined.
Read →Anna Pavlovna Greets Prince Vasili
“Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don’t tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist—I really believe he is Antichrist—I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my ‘faithful slave,’ as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened you—sit down and tell me all the news.”
It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna Pávlovna Schérer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Márya Fëdorovna. With these words she greeted Prince Vasíli Kurágin, a man of high rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her reception. Anna Pávlovna had had a cough for some days. She was, as she said, suffering from la grippe; grippe being then a new word in St. Petersburg, used only by the elite.
Anna Pávlovna runs at Prince Vasíli with a torrent of outrage before she even says hello, and it tells you everything about how her world works: politics is the game you play to seem alive and important. She threatens to disown him, calls him her "faithful slave," and only then remembers to ask how he is. This is the opening of the whole novel, a July evening in 1805, and Tolstoy sets it in a drawing room where a war that will swallow thousands is first served up as gossip. Even her illness is a fashion, since "grippe" is a word only the smart set has learned to use.
The Salon and the Families
As war with Napoleon looms, Petersburg society gossips in Anna Pávlovna’s salon while the fates of three great families begin to entwine.
Comet of 1812
A comet blazes over Moscow, and one lovesick man reads catastrophe as the promise of a new life.
Prince Andrew Bolkonsky
A brilliant, dissatisfied prince seeks greatness, loses faith in glory, and learns forgiveness at the edge of death.
War and Peace
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