Tolstoy’s relationship with cinema was upbeat from the very first days when the new art of ‘motion pictures’ made its appearance in the Russian arena. Known for his proverbial dislike of theatre, he developed a lively interest in cinematography, seeing it not as the essence of artifice, but as a fascinating way of rendering the real. The attraction was mutual. During the last years of his life, Tolstoy featured in several documentaries and newsreels; and his works – shorter texts, as well as novels – were adapted for the screen from 1909 onwards. The idea of compressing a large volume of text into a short film did not seem to stop directors, and in 1915 three leading Russian filmmakers, almost in competition with each other, produced three different versions of War and Peace (Natasha Rostova, directed by Petr Chardynin; War and Peace, directed by Vladimir Gardin and Iakov Protazanov; and War and Peace, produced by the Drankov company and directed by Anatolii Kamensky). Their interest was not entirely coincidental: given the political context of the day, these screenings were most evidently triggered by the outbreak of the First World War. Since then, for more than a hundred years, Russian and foreign filmmakers have been returning to Tolstoy’s 1869 epic; at present, there are five Western and three Russian adaptations of the novel (Table 10.1, excluding silent films).

The fact that War and Peace remains a popular choice for modern directors prompts a series of questions concerning the very nature of the dialogue implied in the process of text-to-screen adaptation. Can this interest be simply attributed to the inexhaustible potential of Tolstoy’s thought, which allows for more and more layers to be discovered by new generations of readers? Or does it bear witness to the overall development of the cinematic means of expression, which allows modern filmmakers to achieve a higher degree of artistry, and thus ‘open up’ the richness of Tolstoy’s text? In this regard, it is worth noting that Western screen adaptations have certain ‘advantages’, since they are made in the context of a higher degree of estrangement from the original national style, cultural memory and tradition, bringing out the transnational elements of a canonical work.