For casual cinephiles, Soviet cinema often conjures two towering figures: Sergei Eisenstein, the revolutionary pioneer of montage, and Andrei Tarkovsky, the poetic visionary of metaphysical cinema. Yet, the most monumental achievement in Soviet film history belongs to neither. Instead, it is the work of Sergei Bondarchuk, an actor-turned-director whose sophomore feature, *War and Peace* (1965–1967), stands as a colo…