Fanvid: Death Waltz (Fall of Eagles)

[thisbluespirit]

When I said the other day that part of my problems were my own fault, it was the making of this (largely) over the weekend that I meant. (And, don't worry, I'm not making another vid until I can be sensible again, which I thought I had trained myself to be. Also I encountered yet more technical issues. *joy*) Anyway, I killed my brain for a Completely Obscure Fanvid! Yay, me. And here it is:

Death Waltz (Fall of Eagles, 1974) to Tchaikovsky, Waltz (Serenade in C).
Royals and revolutionaries dancing towards disaster. Featuring (deep breath): Charles Kay (Nicholas), Patrick Stewart (Lenin), Gemma Jones (Princess Vicky), Curt Jurgens (Bismarck), Denis Lill (Fritz), Gayle Hunnicutt (Alexandra), Barry Foster (Kaiser Wilhelm II), and Diane Keen (Empress Elisabeth). With Miles Anderson (Franz Josef), Pamela Brown (Archduchess Sophia), Michael Kitchen (Trotsky), Lynn Farleigh (Nadezhda Krupskaya), Paul Eddington, Donald Gee, Freddie Jones (Witte), David Collings (Pavel Milyukov), Maurice Denham (Kaiser Wilhelm I) and Jan Francis (Ballerina).

With a warning for some mild blood & violence, and use of (what I assume to be) contemporary historical images.

If you have a moment to look at it, that would be very kind - it's not spoilery (I'm still only halfway through the series and anyway, it's history!) and I hope that it will either work in a) conveying the general overall sense of the vid, or b) at least be a pretty thing with dancing and movement and Patrick Stewart eating pancakes. (It is a fairly painless way to see some of Patrick Stewart being Lenin.) If not, well, at least I like it...

The first episode was entitled Death Waltz, and I immediately had this idea - luckily, as I found, I actually had a fitting piece of music by Tchaikovsky as well. Although I am probably a bad person for making even dramatised versions of Lenin and Trotsky sort of waltz.

Comments

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Well I like it too. And it makes me want to watch the series even more at some point. Curt Jurgens as Bismarck, eh? I know him mainly from classic war movies like The Enemy Below and The Longest Day, but he was also in the Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me. I like the way you use the ballerina as an ongoing theme as you cut back and forth between the crowned heads and ol' Vladimir Ilyich and his co-conspirators, plotting to seize control of the means of producing pancakes... ;D

[thisbluespirit]

Thank you! It seemed an inevitable thing to do with it. :-)

And it is pretty good. Episode 1 is so narrative-heavy and full of contemporary images that I really wasn't sure about it, but all the other episodes have been great so far (and that one was good once they stopped narrating everything). My DVD cover does say that it is a rare TV appearance for Curt Jurgens. (I suppose if you promise someone they can play Bismarck, they can't refuse, heh.) The pancakes are a cunning ruse to disguise the fact it is a radical meeting.

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Was Colin Baker in it at all? I was looking out for him, but the closest I could see was that chap in the red uniform opening the doors quite early on, and on reflection I don't think it was him at all.

Those scheming Bolsheviks - so skilled in the arts of political subterfuge... ;D

[thisbluespirit]

No, he's not; I'm still only halfway through and he's in it at some point towards the end, so I haven't seen him yet, either. That was good thinking, though, because that's Barry Foster as the Kaiser, who is Colin Baker's father (his characters father, I mean, or at least, that was my assumption).

Because of the huge time span and things, very few people clock up more than 2 episodes, even the major characters.