631 The Winds of War

First  viewed  : 11   September  1983

This  monumental  U.S.  mini-series  arrived  here  with  such  a  bad  press, led  by  Clive  James  in  particular, that  you  had  to  tune  in  just  to  see  if  it  was  as  atrocious  as  reputed.

It  was  an  adaptation  of  Herman  Wouk's  mammoth  novel  about  the  Second  World  War  in  which  a  fictional  American  naval  officer, Victor  "Pug"  Henry  or  a  member  of  his  family  are  caught  up  in  every  significant  event  of  the  war  despite  the  inconvenient  fact  that  the  Americans  were  not  very  involved  in  the  first  third  of  it . Wouk  himself  was  the  main  writer  of  the  screenplay.

 Robert  Mitchum  - at  65,  surely  somewhat  old  for  a  serving  officer - played  "Pug"  and , true  to  the  book,   bumped  into  the  great  and  bad  on  contrived  pretexts. The picture  above  shows  him  shaking  hands  with  a  particularly  unconvincing  Hitler ( Gunter Mesiner  )  - he's  the  short  guy  third  from  the  left  in  case  you're  struggling .

The  critics  were  right , it  was  crap  but  my  mum  defiantly  stuck  with  it  - "well  I  like  it !"

There  was  a  sequel  with  some  casting  changes  five  years  later. War  and  Remembrance   was, if  anything.  even  more  reviled,  particularly  for  using  Jane  Seymour  to  represent  the  Holocaust  victims, although  I  think  Ali  McGraw,  who  played  the  character  in  the  earlier  series,  would  have  been  worse.