My favourite episode is 'Dress Rehearsal', especially the scenes with the old Russian Prime Minister Stolypin. He understands the political scene so effortlessly, and the way he looks contemptuously at Isvolsky, with his fantasies of a "Grand Bargain". I liked near the beginning when he calls Isvolsky a fool: "A fool is a fellow with bells on. You can hear him coming a mile off, and when he gets there, all he has to hit you with is a balloon."
Then there's all the anti-semitism, which was pretty typical in Russia, I suppose. "That Jew! That awful Jew!" Isvolsky rants when he realizes he's been doublecrossed. Of course, he was perfectly willing to connive with Aerenthal when he thought he was going to come out a big winner.
King Edward was great - another very savvy political expert there. I liked when Clemenceau reminded him he'd promised not to gamble anymore and he docilely put away his money.
When the whole thing collapses in an embarrassing flop, both ministers are meeting with the Tsar, and Isvolsky sputters, "Oh, who cares about the Serbs, anyway?" "WE DO!! RUSSIA DOES!!" Stolypin roars back at him. Even Nicholas doesn't have much use for him anymore, though he's characteristically soft-spoken about it: "We don't care about the Dardanelles anymore."
After that one I think I like 'End Game', though anything with Barry Foster as the Kaiser was great. There's a lot of good repartee in it: "The Kaiser didn't want this war." "No, he wanted a victory." When he goes to meet Prince Max of Baden and he notices a thermometer on the desk. "Max, do you have the influenza? We shouldn't even be in the same ROOM with you!" and he sweeps out. And when all is lost, he's still feeling sorry for himself when he thinks how the Allied propaganda blame him personally for all the suffering, "It's so UNFAIR!"
But the scene with Dona was rather touching, when she starts sobbing as she thinks of Nicky and Alex and all the children murdered by the Bolsheviks. And he describes his dream, of all his royal cousins mocking him, and she asks if when he saw Nicky and Alex, were they already dead? "Did they still have...faces?" He really looks stricken, and you know he must have felt some serious guilt about that, since he was the one who sent Lenin back to Russia. He couldn't tell her that, of course.
Flat, drab passion meanders across the screen!
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Mortimer605
12 years ago
I agree with you about "Dress Rehearsal".It`s my favorite episode together with "Requiem". Stolypin is great character and it`s a pitty that we didn`t saw more of him. My favorites also are "English princess" and "Honest Broker" (episodes 2 and 3). I liked the five main characters - Wilhelm I, Bismarck, Fritz, Vicky and Willy; but relatioship between Vicky ( liberal and naturally Anglophile) and Bismarck ( Machiavellian conservative prussian militarist)is in the hart of these episodes. Their long private war for the soul of Germany ends with Bismarck`s victory but only for a short. In the end he is some kind of a looser. His last meeting with Vicky is extremely fine scene.
The series is excellent but my only complaint is that I have feeling that some episodes are missing:
1)At least one episode more with Franz-Joseph and Sisi ( at the time of the defeat of the austrian army by the prussians ( 1866 ) and the creation of Austro-Hungarian Monarchy ( 1867 ). That episode would be a nice contrast to the episode "English princess".
2)At least one episode with Rudolph before suicide.
3) Episode about collapse of Austro-Hungarian Empire ( 1918; with Karl and Zita as main characters)
4)Nicholas II is the main russian character in this series but his father ( Alexander III ) and especially grandfather ( Alexander II ) were much more interesting personalities than him. Alexander II was a complex liberal reformer whose reign began with so much hope ( 1855 - one of the turning points in Russian history ) and ended tragically ( 1881 ). His wife Marie of Hesse is my favorite tsarina. Both were tragic figures. Their second son and heir Alexander III ( father of Nicholas II )is remembered as a ultra-conservative ruller who "froze" Russia but he was not one-dimensional figure. His thirteen-year reign was filled with peace in foreign policy and economic growth.
5)I`m not sure the episode about Sisi`s murder would be a good choice. Rachel Gurney is little miscast as Sisi in "Requiem"( she looked too old - real Sisi was 52 during Mayerling events but she looked at least ten years younger than her age). Besides, her tragic death in Geneve was an event that didn`t make any sense. Maybe a better idea would be her appearance in epilogue in the last ( fictional, see above) episode about collapse of the Habsburg Empire. ( Of course, she would be dead by then for twenty years but she as a ghost or something similarly with a good monologue would be very fine conclusion of the series.
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Rosabel
12 years ago
'Requiem' is a terrific episode, and I've always felt that it could just stand alone as a drama, quite separate from the series. With the others, it was sort of a continuing drama - what the Romanovs or Willy did in one episode may not have really been directly connected to the next episode, but you did feel you were seeing parts of a long drama that rolled on for years. This one was short (a few days long), only had a few locations, and had a small cast of participants. And it was filmed like a murder mystery, as it must have seemed to the people experiencing it. What happened? Who killed whom? Suspicion goes one way, then another, and then there's the final desolate truth revealed - not to the detective, but to Sisi, who's deceived and betrayed throughout. What a terrible touch, that Rudolph didn't even send his father a farewell letter; he didn't even have that final consolation, he had to ask to read Sisi's.
I agree that the story of the Austro-Hungarian empire gets a bit shortchanged at the end. You can't tell from the series just what happens, everything seems to sort of dissolve. All we get are names - yeah, technically we met Karl and Zita, but it was in just 2 scenes, I think, and I didn't even really know who they were. Never saw him as Emperor, the whole thing just faded out.
Flat, drab passion meanders across the screen!
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nyctc7
12 years ago
I like Rosabel's list. 'Dress Rehearsal" might be my favorite episode, too. As to Clemenceau, Edward, and Isvolsky, I liked that scene (Clemenceau's reminder about gambling) when they are lunching in Austria and Edward beckons Times reporter (and later editor) Wickham Steed over. Clemenceau makes the bet that Steed can't say something that they've already heard, and when he does, the look on the three faces is priceless. Later, when Isvolsky is in Clemenceau's office and word comes in that Austria has annexed Bosnia, earlier than Isvolsky anticipated.
I liked the scenes with Sergei Witte. More railways Witte? You always want more railways! And the scene with Witte and Professsoor (as Witte says it) Milyukov in Witte's apartment.
Great stuff. Also loved any scene with Barry Foster (Wilhelm II).
The scene when Vera Zasulich can't believe Lenin won't meet with the husband of the woman who committed suicide bceause of Nikolay Bauman, then later when she realizes she has been cast aside by Lenin when he removes her from the Iskra board.
Any scene with Curt Jurgens (Bismarck)
Any scene with Michael Bryant (Rachkovsky)
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