"Fortunes of War" (1987)TV mini-series

Regisseur:

James Cellan Jones

Drehbuchautoren:

Olivia Manning (novels)
Alan Plater (adaptation)

Premierendatum:

11. Oktober 1987 (UK)

Genre:

Drama | Kriegsfilm

Plot:

Guy Pringle and his new wife, Harriet, are members of the English community in Bucharest, Rumania on the eve of World War II...

Plot Keywords:

Nazism | Activist | Professor | Dysfunctional Marriage | Melancholy

Filmpreise:

3 wins & 6 nominations

Nutzerkommentare:

A Bit of a Disappointment

Besetzung

Kenneth Branagh	...	Guy Pringle
Emma Thompson	...	Harriet Pringle
Rupert Graves	...	Simon Boulderstone
Robert Stephens	...	Castlebar
Ronald Pickup	...	Prince Yakimov
Vernon Dobtcheff	...	Prince Hadjimoscos
Ronald Fraser	...	Cmdr. Sheppey
Greg Hicks	...	Aiden Pratt
übrige Besetzung in alphabetischer Reihenfolge:
Nicolas Amer	...	Palu
Vladimir Bacic	...	Man on train
Luke Bartley	...	Cpl. Peters
Relja Basic	...	Emmanuel
Alan Bennett	...	Lord Pinkrose
Jeremy Brudenell	...	Charles Warden
Harry Burton	...	Sasha Drucker
Magdalena Buznea	...	Despina
Anthony Calf	...	Cpl. Arnold
Jack Calloway	...	Ross
Nicolas Chagrin	...	Ionescu
Richard Clifford	...	Clarence Lawson
Michael Cochrane	...	Clifford
Beryl Cooke	...	Gladys Twocurry
Sam Dastor	...	Dr. Shafik
Mischa De La Motte	...	Horvath
Erin Donovan	...	Phil
Mark Drewry	...	Dubedat
Keith Edwards	...	Buschman
Mowafta El Hakim	...	Singer in cafe
Glyn Grain	...	Foxy Leverett
Brane Gruber	...	Immigration Officer
Diana Hardcastle	...	Edwina Little
Zdenka Hersak	...	Woman on train
Barry Jackson	...	McCann
Charles Kay	...	Dobson
Jo Kendall	...	Landlady
Gertan Klauber	...	Fat German
Esmond Knight	...	Liversage
Paul Lacoux	...	Sergeant
Caroline Langrishe	...	Bella Niculesco
Nigel Leach	...	Ambulance
Richard Linford	...	Tony Brody
Ciaran Madden	...	Angela Hooper
Philip Madoc	...	Freddie von Flugel
Nickey Margolis	...	Allain
Lollie May	...	Mabel Twocurry
Desmond McNamara	...	Galpin
Ahmed Mehrez	...	Halal
Branko Miklavc	...	German Refugee
Vladimir Mirodan	...	Nikko Niculesco
Claire Oberman	...	Mortimer
Patricia Quinn	...	Mona Castlebar
Jeff Rawle	...	Sgt. Ridley
Alix Refaie	...	Iqal
Clifford Rose	...	Prof. Gracey
Andreja Sarik	...	Doamna Drucker
Snezana Savic	...	Floria
George Savvides	...	Hertz
Elena Secota	...	Sophie Oresanu
Hesham Selim	...	Student
Jeremy Sinden	...	Lord Lisdoonvarna
Leslie Southwick	...	Maj. Hardy
Christopher Strauli	...	Toby Lush
Peter Tilbury	...	Alan Frewin
James Villiers	...	Inchcape
Jack Watling	...	Sir Desmond Hooper

Länge:

407 Min (7 parts)

Produktionsland:

UK

Sprache:

Englisch

Farbe:

Farbe

Tonverfahren:

Mono

Altersfreigabe:

UK:15

Drehorte:

Alexandria, Egypt

Firma:

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)

Dies und das:

Joanne Whalley and Fiona Shaw were considered for the role of Harriet Pringle.

Dialogzitate:

Toby Lush: Guy, you know what Harriet reminds me of? Those lines of Tennyson; "She walks in beauty like the night, Of cloudless climes and starry skies."
Guy Pringle: Byron.

A Bit of a Disappointment

A big novel's length is always a challenge to a film adaptation of the work. When six novels are involved, as is the case here (from Olivia Manning's The Balkan Trilogy and The Levant Trilogy), the task of adapting the work means most of it gets left behind. How to produce a script that retains some of the novel's uniqueness and flavor but is still coherent to viewers unfamiliar with the novel? Various solutions come to mind. For example, Volker Schlöndorff wisely bit off only the first third of Günter Grass's masterpiece, The Tin Drum, and created a film that at times exceeds its source material in power and impact. And against all odds, the young Ray Bradbury managed to extract key scenes and language from Moby Dick to come up with a script which, when coupled with a decent director (John Huston) and good casting choices (I'm thinking here of Orson Welles as Father Mapple), made a pretty decent movie.

Sadly, with Fortunes of War, casting works against the film. Where Guy Pringle is a big bear of a man in the novels, Branagh's sensitive Guy just isn't the same character. And where Harriet Pringle is a small and at times frail woman in the novels, Thompson's Harriet is, well, Emma Thompson. This is not a small matter. The novels' point of view is that of Harriet and what we get there is a detailed, personal, even intimate view of the Pringles' marriage. If you read these novels all in a rush, you almost become Harriet Pringle for a time, immersed in the details of her marriage, seeing the world through her eyes. There's a toughness to Harriet, but also vulnerability, something that Guy often misses as he plunges into one project after another. Little of this comes through in the film.

Of course something will get lost in the translation from the literary to the filmic – this is a challenge all film adaptations have to face. But in this film, the mismatch of the lead actors and the characters they play is simply too much to overcome.