Die Champagner-Dynastie

The saga of the French family de Lancel, since 1910 until the end of the Second World War, is not a bad movie. The video released in Brazil has two and half hours runtime, and the story has all the ingredients of a soap-opera: love, hate, betrayal, rape, war, death, birth etc. There are too much characters, and they are reasonably well developed in a shallow way. Michael York and Hugh Grant, with their strong British accent, are hard to be accepted as French. But Courtney Cox and Hugh Grant in the beginning of their career have a great performance and hook the attention of this romance. The careful production and the selection of good cast and landscapes are also good points in this movie. My vote is six.

i watched this series when i was little (8 or 9) and it had quite an impression on me. my uncle somehow managed to tape it and so i re watched it several times. what i liked best was not the story itself but its historical and geographical background, i mean, Gosh! the movie spans from the beginning of the 20th century to the early 50s, and covers 3 countries France, England, USA. i was greatly impressed by the WWII episode, the "Resistance" and all, fer me it was an excellent prelude to Schindler's list, though the drama is much stronger in the latter. it had beautiful soundtracks and a whole lot of interesting characters. i liked them all but there was one that i loathed!!! Poor Hugh Grand it was the first movie i've seen him in... i can't remember hating a character as much as i hated Bruno. it was yeeeeaaars after when i watched other movies of his and realized that "Hey! That was just a role, you don't have to hate the actor too! lool!"

This made-for-TV movie was so good that 11 years after having watched it I still can't get it out of my mind. The songs were evocative of the World War II era, Courtney Cox played her role brilliantly, and the film/story was inspirational for young women considering non-traditional jobs. Judith Krantz can be justly proud of having written the story, and the film makers did a wonderful job of adapting the book to a movie. What a shame that it is not out on VHS, nor is the soundtrack available (to the best of my knowledge).

I totally loved this movie and cannot rave about it enough. Full of wonderfully stong characters, especially the female ones. It would be easier to talk about if I had seen it more recently, but it has been a while. It is well worth reading the book too, like the movie you just melt into it... I wish I had the PAL version!!

I watched this when I was quite small as an English channel showed this as a tele-series back in the late 80's or beginning of the 90's in Sri Lanka....

There's not many that I've watched that has been able to take a special person in my memory.... but this was one greaaaaaaat series that I looked forward to seeing every week when it was running in episodes...

To think that I remembered the name upto date and to think that I fell for Hugh Grant at a very young age, when other of my age hardly knew that such a character existed, is amazing... when I read through the cast, I even remembered that his role was "Bruno".

Whats even more surprising is my sudden remembrance of the series in 2004... so many years after watching it for the first time... and this is very reason I'm here seated in front of the comp taking time off a pretty busy schedule to give my thoughts on it....

I simply loved it... and thumbs up for the director of the series and the author (judith krantz) both : ). Pls make more of this kind... so that my daughter would be able to enjoy something similar : )