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Sunday, October 11, 2020

War And Remembrance (1988)

A massive (it runs over 26 hours!) look at WWII from America's entry into the war on December 7, 1941 to the day after the bombing of Hiroshima on August 7, 1945 through the eyes of multiple characters including a Navy captain (Robert Mitchum), his adulterous wife (Polly Bergen), his two sons (Hart Bochner, Michael Woods), a Jewish writer (John Gielgud), his niece (Jane Seymour), a British journalist (Robert Morley) and his niece (Victoria Tennant), Adolf Hitler (Steven Berkoff), Edwin Rommel (Hardy Kruger), Franklin D. Roosevelt (Ralph Bellamy), a Jewish inmate (Topol) in a concentration camp among many, many others. Although it occasionally feels sluggish due to the mammoth amount of multiple characters criss crossing over several continents (at least ten countries) and oceans, in the end it remains a gripping look at a defining moment in 20th century history. A sequel to THE WINDS OF WAR (1983) which covered the events that led to America's entry into WWII, it manages to balance both personal stories and the historic moments of WWII, both the heroic and horrific. The huge cast includes Sharon Stone, Eddie Albert, E.G. Marshall, Barbara Steele (who also produced it), Jeremy Kemp, Nina Foch, Ian McShane, Howard Duff, Pat Hingle, John Rhys Davies, Peter Graves, Mike Connors, Sami Frey, David Dukes, Brian Blessed and Robert Stephens. 

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2 comments:

  1. rcoceanOctober 11, 2020 at 9:28 PM

    Great review. Did you really make it through the whole thing? I didn't! Of course, it was made to be watched for a couple hours every week and not in a huge DVD binge watch, but FF through some of it. Mitcham was over 70, and seems to be asleep half the time, and I found he was too old to have a son in combat. And Houseman never could act. Everyone else was OK. There are some good points. The submarine scenes are well done, and the Holocaust ones are appropriately horrifying. Thanks for keeping your site going!

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  2. The CinemaScope CatOctober 12, 2020 at 1:14 AM

    Yes, I made it through the whole thing. I watched about 2 episodes a day for about 2 weeks. It was a good idea replacing John Houseman and Ali McGraw from WINDS OF WAR with John Gielgud and Jane Seymour who are better actors. There's no way either could match the emotionality needed for some of the heavy duty scenes of WAR AND REMEMBRANCE.

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