Ken Burns' America: The Statue of Liberty
by Ken Burns
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DVD details
Actor: David McCullough, Derek Jacobi, Jeremy IronsDirector: Ken Burns
Brand: Paramount
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 60 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-09-28
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: PBS
DVD Reviews of Ken Burns' America: The Statue of Liberty
DVD Review: A wonderful early Ken Burns documentary
Summary: 4 Stars
I remembered watching this on PBS when it was first shown. I did not know who Ken Burns was, even after seeing this. It was only after THE CIVIL WAR (when I was dating a woman who was a friend of Burns at Hampshire College) that I really became conscious of him. I then learned that he had also done THE STATUE OF LIBERTY, HUEY LONG, and THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE, all of which confirmed to me that he was someone whose work I needed to follow. Given the excellence of his many projects since then, I needn't have worried about keeping track of him. Watching his most recent series, on the National Park system, has caused me to go back and watch many of his earlier documentaries. Burns is still a relatively young man and when he has finished the entire body of his work could well be used to introduce an alien from another planet to the United States. It is absolutely astonishing how much of American life he has chronicled in his films. I can't wait to see what he will do next.
Americans really hate the French today. I do not, even though I don't eat French cuisine (I'm vegetarian and it isn't, unlike Italian cuisine, vegetarian friendly). I don't drink wine. I unfortunately do not speak French. But I've never understood the hatred of the French. So many things that we love in modern life originated in France, and the country has generated an astonishing literature and film industry. I love French painting and much French music. And I love things French from many different periods, such as Montaigne and Rabelais from the 16th century to Racine in the 17th century to Montesquieu and Rousseau in the 18th century to Tocqueville, Flaubert, and Balzac in the 19th century to Proust, Sartre, Foucault, and countless others in the 20th. And the help that the French rendered to the colonies in the Revolutionary War and the joint efforts in the two world wars shows a long record of cooperation. I know that many today hate the French because of the opposition of the French to the invasion of Iraq. But most Americans today take pretty much the same position that the French did and probably wish that they'd been more successful in opposing us. But we ought to think more about how this was a gift to America from France.
And what a great gift it was! In fact, have we ever received a finer one? Try to think of New York or America or even the world without it. We would be impoverished without it. I vividly remember going up into it at a time when you could go into the crown. My lone regret was that there were so many people that we could only stay for a few seconds before having to rush off. My boss's boss has an office in Jersey City. If he turns in his chair slightly to his left he can gaze out both on Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. What a great view!
The best thing about this documentary is the amazing photos used throughout. It is fascinating to see the bits and pieces of the Statue of Liberty, many of them quite familiar. one shot, for instance, of the arm holding the torch standing on a French boulevard is striking, and there is a haunting photo of the face with scaffolding around it is especially memorable. There is another with the dissembled torch sitting beside the head.
I loved learning about how the engineer Eifel, who would later build the famous tower, build the internal scaffolding that held the various bits of the statue together. Frankly, there wasn't as much content in this film as much as in Burns's other films, but the great archival footage made up for that. I would have loved to see more photos of the statue being assembled in New York. Surely there are some photos. But that is one of the things that Burns's best films do: they make you want to learn more. In fact, I think I'm going to check right now to see if there are some good photo books on the building and assembling of the Statue.
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Description of Ken Burns' America: The Statue of Liberty
KEN BURNS:AMERICA COLLECTION STATUE - DVD MovieKen Burns's fourth short film gives us a clear taste for the style that he made famous with The Civil War and Baseball. The first half of this hour-long program examines the design and construction of the Statue of Liberty using drawings, photographs, and readings (Jeremy Irons gives voice to French sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, who designed the statue). As narrator David McCullough states, no one at the dedication ceremony mentioned immigration, but the statue became a towering symbol of America's open-door policy. The second half examines the meaning of the statue and of liberty itself. Comments by author James Baldwin, director Milos Forman, and politicians Barbara Jordan and Mario Cuomo reverberate, as does Paul Simon's song "American Tune," which bookends the picture. --Doug Thomas
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