Sergei Bondarchuk, 74; Russian Director, Actor

Sergei Bondarchuk, 74, one of Russia’s greatest film directors and a prominent movie actor. The Soviet news agency Tass hailed him as “an artist of great conscience and strength; Bondarchuk suffered for the Russian people, its difficult fate and its future.” Bondarchuk became well-known when he directed and starred in the Mosfilm-produced “The Fate of a Man” in 1959--a film telling a tragic story of a World War II soldier. He won broader fame for his 1965-67 adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” in which he played Pierre Bezukhov. The 16-hour movie was later re-edited and sold internationally. In 1970, Bondarchuk directed “Waterloo” for Dino De Laurentiis. He was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1960 and the State Prize in 1952 and 1984. In Moscow on Oct. 20 of a blood disease.