I managed to miss the film of "Anne of Green Gables", which was shown first, so I may be the only person on the IMDb to have watched "Anne of Windy Poplars" without actually having seen its predecessor!
I liked it a good deal; I felt that the melodrama at the end was rather less effective than the character studies in the beginning, where the interest lies in discovering just why the Pringle clan are behaving so strangely towards Anne, rather than in matters of life and death, and I have a hard job picturing the lead actress ever playing the irrepressible child-Anne of the original book, but it was definitely worth tuning in for. I did find the presentation of the series of lurid disasters (or threatened disasters) in the finale somewhat hard to swallow in what had been to date a very low-key, gentle film...
I liked it a good deal; I felt that the melodrama at the end was rather less effective than the character studies in the beginning, where the interest lies in discovering just why the Pringle clan are behaving so strangely towards Anne, rather than in matters of life and death, and I have a hard job picturing the lead actress ever playing the irrepressible child-Anne of the original book, but it was definitely worth tuning in for. I did find the presentation of the series of lurid disasters (or threatened disasters) in the finale somewhat hard to swallow in what had been to date a very low-key, gentle film...