Much like the two notable works of le Carre in the so-called "Karla Trilogy," Herman Wouk's "The Winds Of War" and "War And Remembrance" were made into celebrated miniseries that aired on TV. Also like the George Smiley stories, Wouk's televised adaptations are now barely distinguishable from the books he wrote.
Robert Mitchum gives a masterclass in minimalist acting that perfectly captures "Pug" Henry as written. Polly Bergen must have understood the frivolous and irritable Rhoda Henry, because she's expertly unlikable. There was a lot of criticism of the casting choices, because the actors were much older than their characters in general. However, I think it works, because young people of these generations were more mature than people of 1983, or of young people today.
I actively dislike Natalie Jastrow, but this testifies to how good Ali MacGraw was. On the one hand, Byron Henry is a loafer and a bum, so he deserves Natalie, good and bad. But Jan-Michael Vincent was also able to convey his imperfect but real similarity to the heroic Pug, with the internal conflict of admiration and resentment. Ben Murphy's portrayal of Warren Henry is spot-on, with the only weakness that it was impossible to show the character's sexual incontinence on network TV.
And then there's FDR, played by Ralph Bellamy. He's shown more likable and downright heroic than the president probably deserves, but beating back the gravest tyrannies the world has ever known will gain some free passes with most people.
I have to turn to Wouk's portrayal of The Holocaust/Shoah. Many interviews establish that these horrific crimes of the Third Reich inspired Wouk to tell the story. He believed that his primary task as a writer was to tell the true story of Hitler's Germany. He does it well, without it being didactic, cloying, or manipulative. Other more famous films can't say this. To be frank, I saw Schindler's List once, and I have no desire to see it again.
I don't agree that Wouk's characters only exist to serve the history; they seem real enough to me. The characters aren't swallowed by the events through which they live. The things they say and do might be things we'd say and do, if we lived during World War 2.
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