User reviews

I don't know where I was when this first came out on PBS or BBC, but I know where I was when we rented it and watched it recently. Riveted and delighted. I award Fortunes of War a 9.5, from the marvelous real world settings to the splendid acting by every member of this incredible ensemble...and the story is simply superb. I didn't give it a 10 because I can't think of a 10 film at the moment with which to even compare. Enough superlatives. Watch it and be entertained and enlightened. Kenneth and Emma are joys to behold, the predicaments and conflicts totally believable, the insidious creep of Nazi Europe frightening, the subsequent war scenes thankfully subdued but still realistic. Rent it, own it, view it. Again and again.

Discerning Northern Irish actor Kenneth Branagh and the beautiful, brilliant Emma Thompson met and presumably fell in love here, as they play bohemian British newlyweds Guy and Harriet Pringle who arrive in Bucharest, as does the slothful, flat broke Prince Yakimov, who takes up an ad hoc job as a photojournalist of sorts on a British paper to save himself from total indigence. Harriet is introduced to her fellow expatriates, but their happy life is disjoined by the assassination of Romania's prime minister and Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland. Gossip murmurs of a German invasion of Romania and Guy, mentally consumed all the same in his work and arranging civil occasions, is gaulled by his Communism (no pun intended) to take peripheral measures to take care of the family of a Jewish student of his from the anti-Semitic Romanian regime. Although this premise sounds as if it gains momentum and grows more and more exciting, it decidedly does not.

Almost reminiscent of the Jean Renoir film Grand Illusion, Fortunes of War shows a group of people segueing through meetings with different cultures, a war raging on around them but not bothering them any more than some other long-term struggle. But unlike Grand Illusion, the conflicts between the characters are unrelated to the war. It is only one of the dominoes that instigates the many things they do, mainly because they, calm and collected, take refuge in their culture, which remains impervious to the effects all the other ones seem to try to impose upon them through each of these seven one-hour episodes. We watch Guy's lofty devotion to make a difference and boost morale from within. Histrionics mature, decelerate or sustain between the couple and those who come and go from their lives, and we start to care about most of them. With this apposing of following the Pringles subjectively and impartially observing their affiliates, we see how fearful daily life could be with the consistent foreboding of war, but how it isn't. We contemplate Guy with his wife as he preoccupies himself with good intentions towards so many, yet at her exasperated cost, and we want to rattle him out of his cerebrum for a breather in her heart.

In seven hours, the story goes through no significant mood swings, nor any real climax, even in the final episode. But that's just how all of its characters feel about it. Life just goes on, and on and on. Characters latch on, decisions are made, people come and go. My favorite part is when Pinkrose finally gets to give his lecture on Lord Byron.

It is always difficult to judge a movie based upon a book without passing judgment on what it manages to retain and what it (un)intentionally leaves behind. Olivia Manning's books used to be banned in Romania during the communist régime, and that is probably the reason why this TV series has been shot in some locations in Yugoslavia at the time of its production (1986 - 1987). I find the acting excellent, and the atmosphere filled with nostalgia. Nevertheless, given the fact that the producers have included various black-and-white excerpts from WWII documentaries, I find it inexcusable that they haven't also included vintage images of Bucharest in the 1940's, and especially of the Athénée Palace Hotel. Using some lugubrious Ljubliana building as a stand-in is very hard to swallow, especially for someone very well acquainted with the splendours of interbellum Bucharest. The same could have been done about the Royal Palace. And this would have hardly increased the costs. Apart from that, I find this worth watching and re-watching. As one grows older, one sees things differently.

This is a very long, but also very enjoyable movie (originally a tv series) set against the background of WWII. Guy Pringle (Branagh), a university professor, leaves Britain and comes to Romania to teach. He has a love for his wife (Thompson) and all the people surrounding them. We watch his passion to make a difference when other people are escaping from Germans marching toward their city and gain influence from within. Relationships develop between the couple and locals, and we start to care about most of them. We see how horrible everyday life could be with the constant threat of war, but how it isn't. We observe Guy treat everyone around him with good intentions, at the expense of his wife, and we want to shake him to come to his senses. We follow their journey to other countries, and the movie is a joy to watch from beginning to end. There are a few memorable scenes between Guy and his wife that I cannot forget, and Branagh really touches me when he cries. The acting by all the cast is simply wonderful, and the movie is definitely worth spending 3 hours.

I enjoyed the book so much that I bought the movie and sat through hours of it. Best part for me was Egypt. Ronald Pickup was superb as Yakimov. I look forward to reading all of it again.

And that is maybe the biggest compliment that can be given to any Tv adaption of a book, which the majority of the time miserably fails .

Having read and loved the Balkan and Levant Trilogies by Olivia Manning (an excellent, underrated author), I can vouch that this adaption is so true to the original book that every time I have re-read the books, I see in my mind's eye all the characters in this series.

Kenneth Branagh in particular is outstanding as Guy Pringle, the absent minded English professor more in love with his work than with his wife ( until something occurs near the end which makes him realise what it would mean to lose her).

Excellent musical score , landscapes and acting throughout. Of course the 80s production looks a little dated for today's standards but as long as you can overlook this, it's a masterpiece.

This has been being repeated on one of the BBC channels at the moment.

I have the dvd but watched some of it live the other day.

Watching it made me feel old. I would have been 26 when I saw this first on tv,all my family loved it.

I was surprised to see some of the reviews being so negative about this.

Of course if you expect an action packed story you will be disappointed.

I know a lot more about World War 2 now than I did in 1987 but that fact makes no difference to the viewers enjoyment of the series.

Giving no spoilers the series involves the experiences of a group of people in Eastern Europe in the early part of World War 2.

It seems crazy to me that some one on here complains that it was not filmed in the actual locations in the original book,talk about nit picking.

This drama does not require much prior knowledge of the historical period.

This series is a classic of is kind and should be watched by history fans and fans of good acting.

It is an interesting story as it tells a tale about a group of people who live on the brink of the war without seeming to understand the dangers facing them.

In my opinion, Emma Thompson pretty much carries the whole thing, kind of showing how a very classy lady copes with lesser humans. While there are some story-filling war scenes it is not a war movie as we are used to seeing. It is enjoyable and humous on occasion, showing the foibles that one can encounter in life.

Some of those who have commented on "Fortunes of War," have mentioned a 3-hour movie. I just watched a DVD of the 7-part BBC TV mini-series. It runs a little more than 6 ½ hours. At the time of this review, only eight others had reviewed the film, and only 380 had rated it. The high rating (8.1 at this time), means to me that it must rank up there with great works put on film by such English authors as Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Emily Bronte or George Eliot. But such clearly is not the case.

I enjoy most of the pre-war British movies that I have seen. Various films give one a sense of history of the time in the decade leading up to WWII. A number of very good movies give a picture of the life among the civilians in England and elsewhere, especially in the last few years before war and then in the outbreak of war in Europe. We hear and see the concerns and worries, uncertainty from news reports, fear for loved ones, hope against despair, and British resolve.

So, I was anticipating something along those lines in "Fortunes of War." But, we don't get much of that. Instead we are taken along the "adventures" of a recently married English couple in their moves to three locations in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. They are civilians, associated with an institute that teaches English language and culture in other countries. The series/film is based on six novels of fiction by Olivia Manning, who used her travel and living experiences with her husband who worked for the BBC. I'm not familiar with Manning's works, so I don't know how true to the books the mini-series is.

But the film series has only smatterings of war engagements, one of which spends time with a young British soldier who is wounded in Egypt. And, otherwise, there seems to be a mix of concern about war or Nazi Germany among the characters. The film gives far too much time to frivolous matters and somewhat to characters whose parts are frivolous as well. We don't see much depth of character development of these people. These give way invariably to a local adventure for the heroine or a task for the hero. So, we get doses as well of scenery, monuments and antiquity in Greece and Egypt. Interwoven with these, are the personal stories – but just superficially for most of the characters. Not all, but most.

The series has all the trappings of a soap opera. Indeed, the description of Manning's first three novels in an Encyclopedia Britannica article reads like the formula outline for a "soaper." Then, toss in considerable doses of travelogue, with an occasional accident or mishap, and you have a film that's a hodgepodge. I give "Fortunes" six stars for the good scenery shots and for the good acting by the entire cast. Ronald Pickup and Diana Hardcastle give top performances. But, the poor script has just an occasional shot of quality. So, the acting and scenery can't lift the listless plot above the level of a good soap opera.

"Fortunes of War" can be entertaining, in small doses at a time. But only if one doesn't mind a mixed bag of soap opera and travelogue, with fantasy characters and a very slow script. It can't possibly stand up to the great books put on film from Dickens, Austen, Bronte or the likes.

I saw some episodes of this when it was new 35 years ago, and I was very happy to find the possibility to at last watch all the seven episodes. Just the two episodes I saw then made an unforgettable impression, and I always kept hoping for an opportunity to see it all. At last it came, and the unforgettable impression was strengthened to some maximum. It's a great story, acted by a wonderful team of actors, they are all young and fresh here, Emma Thompson at her most adorable, Kenneth Branagh before his Shakespeare films, Rupert Graves young and innocent, Ronald Pickup is more than perfect, old James Villiers has a characteristically melancholy part, Charles Kay is outstanding, and even Geoffrey Rush has a small part in Egypt. And then there is the story of the poor Cambridge professor Lord Pinkrose, wonderfully played by Alan Bennett, who comes all the way down to Bucarest to deliver an exclusive lecture on Lord Byron, who gets caught up in the war turmoil and has to follow the escape of the others first to Athens and then to Egypt, where he at last gets the opportunity to deliver his unique lecture, with unexpected complications. Richard Holmes' music is hauntingly beautiful and perfectly well suited to the different settings, especially in the first episode in Romania, the fourth episode in Athens (the most beautiful episode) and the final episode with the showdown. The fact that the director James Cellan Jones and the composer Richard Holmes both made all seven episodes gives the film a wonderful continuous uniformity with a constant flow and unity of style enhancing its beauty and artistic splendour. It is possibly the highest complimentary verdict you can give a film that it sticks faithfully to the book, which this film evidently does with meticulous care. There is nothing more to be said. This is one of the finest BBC productions of an epic ever.

This is about a group of intellectuals who have to keep moving to avoid the total inconvenience of the advancing war.

Guy Pringle is so absorbed with himself through his work, that he is completely neglectful of his new wife. He is really frustrating.

His disinterest in anything she does forces her to find company elsewhere, but it is more subtle than would be portrayed today. No jumping into bed with the the first man who shows interest.

It is a very wordy drama and fractured as it passes from Rumania to Turkey to Egypt.

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.

I've just watched Fortunes of War again after a 17 year gap and it is every bit as good as I remember it.

The fact that Branagh and Thompson's marriage fell apart in the 1990s adds poignancy to their acting of marital tensions here.

Much of the drama revolves around Harriet's struggle to get Guy to "see" her as a person in her own right, although Branagh's portrayal of Guy's grief is the emotional high point.

Two supporting roles deserve a special mention - Ronald Pickup as the (ultimately) lovable aristocratic rogue Prince Yakimov, and Alan Bennett as the blinkered, snobbish and self-important Lord Pinkrose. Thank God we were spared more than the first five words of his lecture!

Even the small roles (e.g. Simon's army physiotherapist) are beautifully played.

The camera work is also wonderful - particularly the final shot.

The only drawback of seeing it on video, as opposed to the original TV episodes, is that the haunting theme tune is only heard right at the end of the film.

The three points are for the splendid production values. I have not read the novels but offer this point of view based solely on the TV series. Well acted by all means, but Fortunes of War is ultimately tedious and horrendously disjointed. It is like watching a Play for Today that goes on and on and on. While Plater's terse and character-obsessed style no doubt works for short TV drama and the stage, it is out of place in a lavish and lengthy production such as this. In the end there was no plot to speak of. I kept waiting for something to happen, but it never did. I kept waiting for some drama, some explosion of conflict between the seemingly endless numbers of characters but again there was nothing. Yes, we had a snapshot of Europe on the brink of war, of the British ex-pat community at play, desperately trying to ignore the gathering storm and looking to their own self interest. But so what? This theme has been done to death. The characters were quirky in some cases (and then only in an irritating way) but mostly they were extremely dull. I was unable to care about any of them. We are told that the story is about the break up of the Pringle marriage as it faces the stresses and strains of impending war. But the impending war never seemed to really threaten and the British ex-pats seemed almost unconcerned about it. The Thompson- Branagh relationship- if relationship is the right word- lacked any passion and from the start they seemed to be two dull people ideally suited to each other. There was never ever a 'relationship' to break up and so when it 'started' I really didn't feel anything at all. Branagh's character was the most disappointing, almost soporifically so. We are told he was a communist, feverishly against war, yet he expresses little outrage at the collapse of civilization (apart from the odd and very unconvincing 'war is an outrage' uttered over yet another glass of wine). Not such an outrage that it should interrupt his frankly absurd obsession with Shakespeare et al at a time when everything Shakespeare stood for was crashing down on his head. All the characters seemed to be thoroughly amoral. The only one I frankly cared for was the old man and the toy dog he dragged around. In the end that summed up this failed production for me. Nothing but a drag.

I've watched this 3 hrs+ movie a dozen of times already, and I am sill thirsty for more. This movie is packed with beautiful acting by nearly all casts. These English actors seem to know how to control their facial expressions, vocal tones, body movement with remarkable precision to convey all degrees of emotions and personalities. Directing, music, costume, editing, cinematography are all equally good as well, and together with the great actings, creates a beautiful harmony. This movie is made of one piece. Like "Lawrence of Arabia", whereever we slice it, the piece has a harmony, like the music by great composers.

If I have to live in a desert island and can bring one video with me, I guess I'll choose this one.

I have watched some excellent British tv shows over the years, to put it mildly this wasn't one of them. It was what I call a 'nothing show' because nothing happened! It was boring as hell and made me want to tear my hair out due to monotony! Around the same time this terrible sleeping pill was made, another series by the name of 'winds of war' was also aired in USA. It was a masterpiece! They captured personal story arcs amongst the ravage of war poignantly and majestically. The production values were excellent. This travesty of an effort is an affront to the war, medium of direction,the art of story and script writing. It seems a deliberate effort was made to make it as slow and boring as possible. The tragedy being that this aired AFTER Winds of War was already available. How could this even be made? Such a disappointing experience.

Dull, formulaic stuff. The only saving grace is that the characters are probably authentic representations of the boring dullards that caused the catastrophe they project. No doubt representative of the BBC in many respects. It reminds me of a dreadfully bad Brideshead Revisited: similar characters but so much poorly acted with dreadfully poor attention to cultural issues. Some of the actors should really know better but they don't seem too concerned when it comes to selling their cultural souls down the river. It really is the most tedious viewing and I am astonished that any sentient viewer can find this the least bit stimulating. What a dreadful little parade.

What a load of sub-soap-operatic bilge.

One episode of this was as much as I could take. What with the insufferably freeloading Prince Yakimov (played by Ronald Pickup) and the plot which was more boring than the most boring soap opera.

What/where is the unique value of this piece? The dialogue is pedestrian and little of any real consequence happens in the entire first episode. Perhaps it gets better later on, by why take a chance and invest another 5 hours of your time after such a poor first episode?

There needs to be either some much deeper "philosophical" dialogue or something of consequence needs to happen.