The narrative here focuses mainly on just three of Tolstoy's characters – Pierre, Natasha and Alexei – portrayed by Henry Fonda, Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer respectively. This latter is the approach taken for Dino de Laurentiis's 1956 Italian-American co-production. Or, you can prune it down to something more manageable, excising whole characters and subplots, but recreating certain sections of Tolstoy's work more or less verbatim to preserve what is vital about his work. You can film it page-for-page, and make an eight-hour behemoth, as Sergei Bondarchuk did with the 1960s Russian production.

Stephen Vizinczey suggests that Tolstoy created Maria out of his longing for his mother, Princess Maria Nikolayevna Volkonskaya, who died before Tolstoy's second birthday.If you want to bring such an vast, sweeping yet intensely human novel such as Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace to the screen with both its breadth and depth intact you can do either one of two of things.

Nikolai Rostov relies on his work and her moral support, not financial, to become a wealthy and content estate owner. Maria marries the impoverished Nikolai Rostov in the winter of 1813, and eventually the couple have four children. Maria's brother, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, is seriously wounded in battle and chances to fall under the care of Natasha Rostova, with whom Princess Maria becomes close friends after witnessing Andrei Bolkonsky's death together. They fall in love, but several situations keep them apart and eventually they both forgo any hope of marriage.

The peasants on her Bogucharovo estate threaten to become violent and Maria is rescued by Nikolai Rostov. Princess Maria's father dies during the days leading to the battle of Borodino. An attempt to marry her off to the profligate Prince Anatole Kuragin fails. She is overshadowed by her beautiful French companion, Mademoiselle Bourienne. Princess Maria is a plain woman, whose lack of beauty is offset by her large, caring eyes. Princess Maria, the sister of Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, is a deeply religious young woman who has resigned herself to an unmarried life to be with her domineering father, Prince Nikolai Bolkonsky. Princess Maria Nikolaevna Bolkonskaya ( Russian: Марья Болконская, Mar'ia Bolkonskaia) is a fictional character in Leo Tolstoy's 1869 novel War and Peace. Andrei Bolkonsky, Nikolai Bolkonsky I, Nikolai Bolkonsky II

War & peace tolstoy