Wouk's central characters are Commander Henry his frivolous, party-going wife Rhoda (Polly Bergen) their son Byron (Jan-Michael Vincent) Byron's girlfriend and, eventually, wife Natalie (Ali MacGraw) Henry's son Warren (Ben Murphy), of whom very little is seen until the final four or five hours or so and daughter Madeline (Lisa Eilbacher), who goes to work for CBS. 'Winds of War' at its best mistily evokes the more orderly rhythms of a prenuclear world. It doesn't even bother with being an antiwar movie if anything, it pines for the wars of simpler times, when bad weather in the English Channel was enough to forestall doom. 'Winds of War' is a Whole War Catalog, a pastiche of all the other movies made about the war since its conclusion. 1 Victoria Tennant and Robert Mitchum in 'The Winds of War' WINDS OF WAR 'WINDS OF WAR,' From L1 fitfully enticing composite. Wouk and the filmmakers have given us nothing really new, but they have produced a See 'WINDS OF WAR,' L8, Col. Watching 'Winds of War,' ecstatic superlatives like 'competent' and 'acceptable' come to mind. Of course, then there would be less commercial time to sell (at a reported $170,000 per 30-second spot), and that's still the major 'creative' consideration in undertakings of this sort. However, a first-year film-school student could edit three or four hours out of the thing without hurting the flow at all. Brandon Stoddard, the ABC executive in charge of mini-series and movies, has said that anything less than 18 hours would impair the dramatic 'flow' of the film. Then ABC saw a way of stretching it to 18. Originally, Herman Wouk's TV adaptation of his own tubby novel was supposed to last 12 hours. Since ratings weeks begin with Sunday, that means 'Winds' will blow up heady Nielsens for ABC during two ratings weeks instead of just one.Īnd blow it does-it blows hot, it blows cold, it blows up, but mostly it just blows long. ABC will blitz America with 'War' for a week, starting tonight at 8 on Channel 7, continuing through Sunday, Feb.

This sounds like a conversation with someone who has sat through 'The Winds of War,' the bulbous and bloated 18-hour ABC serial about the months preceding World War II, but it is actually a conversation from it. ROBERT MITCHUM AS Commander Victor (Pug) Henry has just returned from a bombing raid when his London honeybunch asks him, 'It was bad, wasn't it?' To which Mitchum grimly replies: 'It was long.'

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