The Product Is Physically Great; the Content Is Merely Good
Given that the disc set was new or virtually new, it was in the same condition as it would have been had it been purchased off the shelf in a store; namely, flawless. Sadly, however, there were some inadequacies to the production itself. I realize that this was done 45 years ago, but my criticisms do not have that much to do with the techniques and style of those times. The acting was fine and the script superb, so that even in abridged form, it remains sufficiently true to the novel. But the interior scenes are done on video tape, or so it appears---very crisp and often starkly lighted, whereas the exteriors were done on film. The contrast between the two is really jarring. The mostly "Queen's English" accents used by these British actors begins to sound, after awhile, very odd and at last irritating when they are supposed to be Russians. They should have modified their natural accents enough to give the dialogue at least a vaguely Slavic tone to it. Russian, like German, is not exactly a smooth and melodious language like, say, Spanish. English is at bottom Germanic, but enough add-ins from French and Latin have made it far less hard-edged that Russian is, especially when spoken with an upper-class British accent. Finally, the battle scenes are extremely confusing, what with the profusion of different uniforms on both sides, which makes it extremely difficult to tell who is charging at or killing whom at any given point. Those scenes of close combat are pretty badly done, too, looking entirely staged and not very realistic, and when the artillery fires, it is pathetic given that there is no recoil at all of the cannon, so much so that the crews must roll them back to reload (true recoil would have rolled them back). All in all, worth seeing for the sweep and scope, but not nearly so well done as it might have been.
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