BBC's new War and Peace: where is the music?

(The Hussars' Ballad)

A hussar hero of 1812, Denis Davydov

I know what I really-really miss in BBC's new TV adaptation of Tolstoy's 'War and Peace', it's the music.

Many greatest scenes in the novel, and in previous screen versions, are accompanied by great musical background: Natasha singing and dancing, armies marching and the great ball with the Emperor. In the first two episodes of the BBC series there is hardly any music, if at all.

BBC's guide to War and Peace and the new TV series has a dedicated page here. Don't get lost in Russian names and complicated narrative.

The lack of music on the one hand, and the obvious 'sexing-up' of Tolstoy in the new adaptation reminded me of a tremendously popular Soviet musical comedy 'The Hussars Ballad' ("Гусарская баллада", Wikipedia article in English here). Eldar Ryazanov's film is based on a play 'A Long Time Ago' ("Давным-давно") by Alexander Gladkov with original score by Tikhon Khrennikov.

The story is a comedy of errors. Shurochka (Alexandra), a young patriotically minded girl runs away from home dressed up as a hussar cornet (second lieutenant, like the young Churchill) and joins the Russian army fighting Napoleon's invasion in 1812. There, she finds her own true love, gets decorated with a medal, meets field-marshal Kutuzov and the hussar hero of the war Denis Davydov (Davyd Vassiliev in the film and Vassily Denisov in Tolstoy's novel). All along she and others sing beautiful songs.

The film and the musical numbers are still very popular and Poruchik (lieutenant) Rzhevsky, the main male character, since the film has started a folk lore life of its own as a hero of numerous bawdy jokes. This is where the 'sexing-up' reference comes in.

Story lines in the film are reminiscent of Tolstoy's many subplots and there really was a woman in 1812 who sneaked in disguise into the Russian cavalry during the war.

The film is available in full on the Mosfilm's YouTube channel here. (no subtitles, but you won't need them). And here is the Song of King Henry IV from the film, the whole Napoleonic invasion of 1812 in 100 seconds (lyrics unrelated to the story).

 

Banging on the table. War and Peace on BBC (2016)

(epsiode 2)

Dolokhov prototype.

Dolokhov (Tom Burke) banging Helene (Tuppence Middleton) on a dining table is definitely the high point of Episode 2 in the new BBC adaptation of Tolstoy's novel.

NB: wine in glasses and carafe in the foreground wasn't moving! How does one achieve that, I don't know.

Pierre is wonderful and Andrei still disappointing.

Picture: Colonel Alexander Figner (1887-1813) on whom Tolstoy is said to have based the character of Dolokhov. (wikipedia)

According to BBC, the adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's novel averaged 6.3 million viewers, peaking at 6.7 million. It was up against ITV's Endeavour and spy drama Deutschland 83 on Channel 4, which averaged 4.4 million and 1.2 million viewers respectively.

Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' New BBC Adaptation (2016)

Tolstoy.

BBC 1 (TV) started a new TV adaptation of Tolstoy's epic 'War and Peace' (by the way, not rpt not the longest novel ever) with Lily James (Downton's Lady Rose) as Natasha, Paul Dano as Pierre and James Norton as Andrei. (article about the cast in Radio Times)

Actors playing leading characters admitted to not having read the book before, and Andrew Davies (script) and Tom Harper (director) skipped a few crucial bits in the opening episode.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, it’s a 6-part series. Prince Andrei, a central character, was only sketched through his dislike of women, while his dislike of the high society and his ideas on Napoleon have all but disappeared;  and with Pierre-Helene they modified the entrapment scene, leaving out the most exciting moment, Pierre's feeble declaration of love, in French, which they had in the 1972 TV series with Anthony Hopkins.

Rebecca Front (wikipedia about her) as Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskaya, a very minor character in the novel, definitely upstaged all others in the first episode in her confrontation with Prince Vassily (Stephen Rea, wikipedia). Front, a very well-known British comedian and actress, has such a strong presence that everybody else around her somehow disappears into the shadows.

Some viewers were also puzzled by the skull on Natasha's cleavage seen on a very steampunk promotional poster (here). What is it? Steampunk or not, it may be interpreted, at least jokingly,
as a surreptitious hint on Pierre, him becoming a free mason in the course of the book, with the skull, or Adam's head, being the masons’ secret symbol. Tolstoy devotes much attention to masons in the novel. Let's see how the makers of the film tackled this, or not tackled at all.

Pierre and Helene entrappment scene ("Je vous aime") from the 1972 series —