| ||||||||||||||
|
Frequently Bought Together
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images? |
Special Features
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Today the 26-episode production, based on several novels and short stories by John Galsworthy, is a more timeless enterprise than many of the protracted British TV dramas that have followed. While it would be wrong to consider The Forsyte Saga high art, it's certainly a mesmerizing and inspired mix of theater, sprawling Victorian narrative, thinking man's soap opera, and some finely tuned, 1960s black-and-white production values that (especially when shot outdoors) are strikingly handsome.
Above all, Forsyte is driven by its characters--perhaps to an extreme, though the two-generation storyline makes no apologies for creating compelling people whose capacity for short-sighted blundering, bursts of grace, and slow-brewing redemption make them recognizably human. Eric Porter towers over everything as Soames Forsyte, a humorless attorney whose guiding principles of measurable value cause great heartache but slowly evolve, leaving him a graying, good father, arts patron, and sympathetic repository of memory. From the cast of 150 or so, other standouts include Susan Hampshire as Soames's troubled daughter, Nyree Dawn Porter as the wife of two very different Forsyte men, and Kenneth More as the family's artistic black sheep. --Tom Keogh
Product Description
Customer Reviews
What sets this particular adaptation apart from others, especially the recent (2002) version, is the outstanding ensemble acting and rich characterizations. For example, as Soames, compare Eric Porter's crisp, impeccable diction in this version with Damian Lewis's mushy delivery in the 2002 version. Compare the delightful, comic realization of James (Soames's father), played by John Welsh in 1969, with the indistinguishable-from-all-the-other-Forsytes character in 2002. Most compelling, compare Nyree Dawn Porter as Irene in 1969, with... well, there really is no comparison here.
Of course, visually, this version suffers compared to last year's. It's shot in black and white, mostly on stage sets. Clearly, they used very few takes (another tribute to the actors), as minor defects like coats falling off racks, cameras getting bumped, slightly muffed lines are retained. But, really, who cares when you're watching the finest combination of acting and screenwriting ever put on TV?
This DVD not only contains the entire set of 26 fifty-minute episodes, but also additional material: cast interviews, behind-the-scenes, even deleted scenes and outtakes. Altogether, a beautiful job.
Donald Wilson was denied funds to produce it for ten years. Had there been a delay of a further year the series would have been filmed in colour, as he wished, rather than black and white.
The first of the John Galsworthy novels on which the series is based contains almost no dialogue. BBC script writers supplied the dialogue that helped make the ten siblings in the eldest Forsyte generation so memorable.
Galsworthy intended the Forsytes to represent the rapaciousness, greed and snobbery of the English upper middle class. In this adaptation they are much more endearing.
Being filmed in black and white made it possible to interpolate archival film of Queen Victoria's funeral procession and of combat scenes from WW1.
Joseph O'Conor who plays the part of Old Jolyon was two years younger than Kenneth More who plays his son.
Eric Porter and Margaret Tyzack, who play Soames Forsyte and his sister Winifred, are in each episode and are required to age almost 50 years.
Although never credited, the music that opens and closes each episode is the first movement, "Halcyon Days", from the suite "The Three Elizabeths" written in the early 1940s by Eric Coates.
This DVD series includes all 26 episodes of the original version of The Forsyte Saga, and runs approximately 21.75 hours. I believe the technical information concerning a runtime of approximately 660 minutes listed by Amazon.com is incorrect, leading to the confusion by A Viewer in Arlington VA.
With the help of a friend I checked numerous other sites offering the same DVD for sale, including the BBC which produced the series, and all sites stated this was the complete 26-episode version, with a running time as I stated above.
I write this only to clear up any confusion that might occur as a result of both the improper run time listed by Amazon.com, and the incorrect review that resulted from that incorrect information.
