Reviews

Chronological fuzziness and overdrawn fictional characters aside, this fairly small budget Russian historical series still offers a fascinating, often opulent panorama of Russia and the Eurasian steppes during the period of Mongol domination in the 13th and 14th centuries. It's a brilliant evocation of a place and time period most of us know nothing about, and an insight into the Russian experience that very few other Europeans could understand.

I have some criticisms: 1. I think -- though I'm no expert -- that harem politics are over-emphasized in the Mongol context -- what's depicted here seems a later development in other Central Asian and Islamic states, and 2) the stubbornness and sheer stupidity about "love" of various of the fictional characters are adolescent fantasies that don't exist in reality, and detract from the credibility of the story. Very romantic, of course, but...really.

I saw this in a binge on Amazon Prime. Highly recommended for unusual context and content, good performances, cinematography and other qualities. Not perfect, but very good.

A lot of people here seem to believe that the fantastic 13-hour score of Victory at Sea was composed by Richard Rodgers -- it was not. Rodgers contributed 12 short themes composed on piano, which were then expanded and orchestrated by the great Robert Russell Bennett, who also wrote of lot of extra music for this show not inspired by Rodgers. Rodgers always gave the credit to Bennett, saying that he made the music sound so much better than it really was.

I watched this show repeatedly as a child, since it was rerun on TV continuously well into the 1960s. The episodes combine an obvious respect for the Allied sailors and soldiers who won the war with a sort of bumptious patriotism that was absolutely pervasive on TV in the 1950s. Good memories!

On June 18, 1815, all the promise of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution were snuffed out in a single day. Since then, we in the West have been ruled almost always by cynical oligarchs focused on greed and the privileges of the elite. We have played recklessly with nationalism,experimented cruelly with arid socialism, and cynically dabbled in democracy. We have come close to self destruction, and may yet accomplish that deed. Sadly, that could all have been avoided except for the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon's stomach cramps.

Despite two centuries of (non-French) propaganda about his power-corrupted self-centeredness, Napoleon was a true visionary revolutionary with an extremely advanced notion of European political, social and economic relationships. Had his dream of a single Western polity come into being after 1815, the world would have suffered much, much less from fraternal and genocidal conflicts in the past century. The conventional wisdom of the victors -- that Waterloo was the last scene of a heroic struggle of freedom loving peoples to defeat French tyranny -- tries to conceal the fact that all the victors actually did was reimpose the tyranny of the ancien regime.

So...thank you, England, and William Pitt, Jr. Thank you Prussia, Stein, Hardenberg and Queen Louise. Thank you Austria, Kaiser Franz (the father in law of Napoleon) and Metternich. And thank you Russia and Alexander. Through your work in destroying Napoleon and the promise of the Enlightenment we have gotten to enjoy:

Two World Wars; Vicious natonalism on both left and right; Hitler and Stalin

The British officers in this movie are so ridiculous -- all of them are gorgeous and perfectly groomed aristocrats with not a hair out of place, not an ugly, inbred throwback in evidence -- though of course there were plenty of those. Plummer's portrayal of Wellington is a decent recreation of England's greatest commander. The music at the Countess of Richmond's ball, a beautifully shot sequence, is all wrong -- Vienna 1890, not Brussels 1815. But it's a lovely extended scene.

The Prussians are exactly what you would expect with a Russian director -- mindless proto-Nazis.

The French, of course, are very brave, and very foolish. They die noisily, but magnificently.

Rod Steiger is not the actor one would want to play Napoleon, despite superficial resemblances from several angles. Yes, Napoleon got a bit chubby in later years, but not double-chinned. And where is the handsomeness, the charisma, the EYES that flashed and commanded? Not here. Steiger blusters and shouts instead. And the script's depiction of Napoleon's supposedly tortured inner thoughts is dubious at best.

The Battle of Waterloo, which takes up the last third of the movie, is utterly stupendous, even better than director Bondarchuk's Battle of Borodino in his Russian epic, War and Peace (1968). Nowadays, this would have been done using CGI, and wouldn't have been half as thrilling.

I first saw this unique film at age 9 or 10 on New York City TV (1956-57). I was completely thrilled and overwhelmed, although personal experience may have played a role -- I had many unhappy separations from my emotionally disturbed mother as a child, and really identified with the character played so magnificently by the young Ivan Jandl. But I also fell in love with Montgomery Clift, an intense boyhood crush for this wonderful "dad" which remains undimmed to this day because of his remarkably empathetic and generous portrayal here. This is 1948, and Monty was still almost a child -- but was he EVER better? And the rest of the cast is just superlative, especially the heartrending, utterly inspiring Jarmila Novotna, a great and famous Czech opera singer who also made a few movies.

Make no mistakes -- this is a low budget movie with few frills. Technically, it is primitive compared to better-financed Hollywood projects of the time. But in addition to the great stuff referenced above, it is a remarkable look at immediately-postwar Germany, and a touching reminder of an idealistic American Dream that seems no longer to exist.

Be assured, people: among those great movies people call Must See, "The Search" is a biggie. Find it, and love it!

No need to write a long review -- others here say it very well.

This version of 'Bleak House' is simply one of the best films ever made.

It is the best adaptation of any Dickens work that I can remember, going go back to the wonderful 'A Tale of Two Cities' and 'Great Expectations' of the Golden Age of Hollywood. What is the real core of Dickens' message is highlighted, and the dated dross of sentiment eliminated.

Every single aspect of the production is of the highest excellence. There's really nothing more to say. A must-see, if anything is.

What a disaster! Normally, when one critiques a historical movie, it's always fun to point out the inaccuracies that slip in, usually added by the writers to create more "dramatic" situations. However, "Imperium: Nerone" is a whole 'nuther kind of animal. In this movie you strain to find ANYTHING at all that is confirmed by the historical record amidst the farrago of nonsense and fiction presented as the life of Rome's bad-boy artist-emperor.

And it's a pity, because Nero is one of the most fascinating of all the Roman emperors. His life was filled with enough tumultuous events and interesting people to make a really good movie. The producers of this mess chose another route, which leads only to head-scratching on the part of any informed viewer.

Just a few examples:

1. Nero is depicted as an 6-8 year old boy when Caligula has his father killed for treason, exiles his mother Agrippina, and sends the boy to be raised by slaves in the countryside. "Ten years later," the story resumes just before the assassination of Caligula. Facts: Nero was born about six months after Caligula began his four year reign, and was only three when he was assassinated; Nero's father died of natural causes; Agrippina was briefly exiled for bad behavior, not treason; and Nero was not raised among slaves, but had the typical upbringing of a young member of the imperial family.

2. Okay, according to the writers, Nero is now about 16 when his great uncle Claudius becomes emperor (in fact he was about to turn 4); Agrippina engineers the downfall of the empress Messalina and marries Claudius, who adopts Nero. Then he goes off to conquer Britain, and is poisoned by Agrippina soon after his victorious return. Nero is declared emperor, although he's still perhaps only 18 or 19 years old. Fact: Claudius conquered Britain in 43 A.D., two years after beginning his reign. He lived until 54 A.D. Nero should have been 31 years old by then by any normal chronology, but in fact succeeded to the throne at age 16.

History tells us that there then followed the "Five Good Years," where Nero ruled wisely and well under the tutelage of the philosopher Seneca and the Praetorian commander Burrus. This is shown -- sort of -- except that portraying the Roman Senate as opposing Nero's good measures is false. Senatorial opposition to Nero only commenced when he started to show signs of insanity and began killing Senators for real or imagined treason.

3. Nero's mother Agrippina is the controlling sort, who murdered her uncle-husband to make her son emperor. After a while, Nero tires of her meddling and decides to kill her. In the movie, he sends his henchman Tigellinus to stab her to death. All true enough, but the reality was so much better! Agrippina was a survivor, and didn't go easily. Nero tried three times to poison her, but as an old poisoner herself she was savvy to all that, and he failed. Then he tried to crush her to death by collapsing the ceiling of her bedchamber, but that also failed. Next, he sent her on a voyage on a ship that was deliberately constructed to fall apart and sink; as it went down, she jumped into the sea and swam to shore. Finally, he had her stabbed to death. Now showing all THAT would have definitely improved this movie!

Other errors abound: Nero's lover Acte was not a childhood slave-friend, she never repudiated him, and there is no evidence that she became a Christian. Nero did not commit suicide by slitting his wrists while sitting beside a lake. Etc. etc. etc.

The sources for Nero's life are primarily the Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius, both of whom were of the senatorial class hostile to him and his memory. But the evidence indicates that he remained very popular with the common people, unlike one of the final scenes where he is pelted by the mob with vegetables as he leaves the city to commit suicide.

WHY did the writers and producers take an inherently interesting story with plenty of good stuff for any movie, and make THIS piece of crap? Oh, and did I mention how cheesy the sets and costumes were? Lol.

One star, because there's no way to rate it lower.

I think this new production of "Rome" is at least as good as the great BBC series "I Claudius." But this isn't just a Tacitus/Graves book on screen...it's a fully drawn picture of Roman history and society with real, living characters everyone can identify with, not just a bunch of perverted, murderous Julio-Claudian aristocrats.

What this production offers, uniquely, is the taste and smell of a distant culture which yet is so similar to ours...in fact, Rome is our parent.

I love ancient Rome, and thank all the gods I lived long enough to see this great series.