We use cookies
We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our website, to show you personalized content and targeted ads, to analyze our website traffic, and to understand where our visitors are coming from.
The adaptation of Tolstoy’s famous novel, directed by King Vidor in 1956, was shot entirely in Italy: in Piedmont and the Cinecittà Studios of Rome, using special effects to recreate the freezing winter which was more responsible for Napoleon’s defeat than the Russian army. The Moscow of Alexander I was built outside Turin.
Napoleon and Alexander I meet in Tilsit Castle, in Eastern Prussia, recreated in Turin’s Castello del Valentino, whose courtyard provided the location for the scene of the peace treaty following the battle of Friedland won by the French in 1807. The Tsar’s residence is set in the Palazzina di Caccia in Stupinigi, hamlet of the municipality of Nichelino (TO). Here, in a ghostly, smoke-filled Moscow, an agitated Napoleon waits (in vain) for the Russian delegation to surrender. Villa Thaon di Revel, a hunting lodge in Ternavasso, near Poirino (TO) serves as Prince Andrei Bolkonsky’s residence, while the interiors are those of the Reggia di Stupinigi. In Piazza Castello (Turin), Palazzo Madama provided the interiors, especially the entrance staircase, for the court ball attended by Natasha Rostova. Promised to Andrei Bolkonsky, she is seduced by Antatole Kuragin whom she meets at the theatre, shot at Teatro dell’Opera in Rome. Stopped before she can compromise herself, she loses Andrei forever: he is later seriously wounded in battle and Natasha will tend to him at the Convento di San Cosimato in Rome.
As for the war scenes, the famous Battle of Austerlitz was fought in the countryside of Pinerolo (TO), the doomed French retreat in Cesana, Ulzio and Lagoscuro. Scenes with real snow were shot near Sestriere and the sleigh race in Cesana. The Battle of Beresina of 1812, a Russian victory during the French retreat, was filmed in the snow on the banks of the River Po between Casale Monferrato and Valenza (AL). Pierre Bezukhov and Andrei Bolkonsky meet in Felonca (MN).
The adaptation of Tolstoy’s famous novel, directed by King Vidor in 1956, was shot entirely in Italy: in Piedmont and the Cinecittà Studios of Rome, using special effects to recreate the freezing winter which was more responsible for Napoleon’s defeat than the Russian army. The Moscow of Alexander I was built outside Turin.
Napoleon and Alexander I meet in Tilsit Castle, in Eastern Prussia, recreated in Turin’s Castello del Valentino, whose courtyard provided the location for the scene of the peace treaty following the battle of Friedland won by the French in 1807. The Tsar’s residence is set in the Palazzina di Caccia in Stupinigi, hamlet of the municipality of Nichelino (TO). Here, in a ghostly, smoke-filled Moscow, an agitated Napoleon waits (in vain) for the Russian delegation to surrender. Villa Thaon di Revel, a hunting lodge in Ternavasso, near Poirino (TO) serves as Prince Andrei Bolkonsky’s residence, while the interiors are those of the Reggia di Stupinigi. In Piazza Castello (Turin), Palazzo Madama provided the interiors, especially the entrance staircase, for the court ball attended by Natasha Rostova. Promised to Andrei Bolkonsky, she is seduced by Antatole Kuragin whom she meets at the theatre, shot at Teatro dell’Opera in Rome. Stopped before she can compromise herself, she loses Andrei forever: he is later seriously wounded in battle and Natasha will tend to him at the Convento di San Cosimato in Rome.
As for the war scenes, the famous Battle of Austerlitz was fought in the countryside of Pinerolo (TO), the doomed French retreat in Cesana, Ulzio and Lagoscuro. Scenes with real snow were shot near Sestriere and the sleigh race in Cesana. The Battle of Beresina of 1812, a Russian victory during the French retreat, was filmed in the snow on the banks of the River Po between Casale Monferrato and Valenza (AL). Pierre Bezukhov and Andrei Bolkonsky meet in Felonca (MN).
Dino De Laurentiis, Carlo Ponti
From the novel by Leo Tolstoy. The story of two aristocratic Russian families against the backdrop of Napoleon’s doomed invasion of Russia during the reign of Tsar Alexander I.
