The Civil War - A Film by Ken Burns

The Civil War - A Film by Ken Burns

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DVD Reviews of The Civil War - A Film by Ken Burns

DVD Review: The birth of the modern television documentary
Summary: 5 Stars

The DVDs not only provide a superior copy of the original series, but also contain a number of excellent features, including additional interviews and a wealth of other goodies. I had rewatched much of the series on video, but I found the color somewhat off. The DVD is a great improvement.

There are so many things to praise about this series. It isn't perfect, and not all will agree with the emphases. The interpretation follows fairly consistently that of James McPherson and Shelby Foote who saw slavery as the root cause of the war, unlike previous generations of historians who out of a respect to Southerners (I'm a Southerner, for the record, though I now live in Chicago) de-emphasized slavery and identified the cause of the war more with states's rights than slavery. But what can't be argued is the brilliantly vivid way that Burns and his collaborators manage to bring back to life a time long past. There are countless photographs and not just those by "Matthew Brady" (most of the photographs attributed to Brady where taken by his assistants, primarily Alexander Gardner, who deserves the reputation that Brady has), but from all over the United States. All the disparate elements are blended seamlessly to produce a nearly unblemished surface.

The quality of the voice-overs was, at the time of this series release, utterly unprecedented. A host of well-known individuals were used in the readings, but the principle ones were Sam Waterson as Abraham Lincoln, Julie Harris as Mary Chestnut, Jason Robards as Ulysses S. Grant, Morgan Freeman as Frederick Douglas, Garrison Keillor as Walt Whitman, journalist Charley McDowell as Private Sam Watkins, George Plimpton as George Templeton Strong, and a host of others. My favorite may be playwright Arthur Miller, who marvelously provides the gruff voice for the remarkable statements by William Tecumseh Sherman.

But despite all this excellence, one person managed to steal the whole show: Shelby Foote. It is simply shocking that amidst all these riches that many of the greatest moments of the show consisted of a lone Southern historian reflecting on the meaning of the war. Foote, although well known for his monumental narrative history of the war, was more or less an unknown. But the series made him a media star, a role that he refused to take on or exploit. Of the ten greatest moments on the series, perhaps seven of them involve Foote, whether explaining that the Civil War was the central event of American history, that it made us a nation (before the war people would say "the United States are" but afterwards they say "the United States is"), or eloquently talking of the brilliance of Nathan Bedford Forrest, or stating that Gettysburg was the cost the South had to pay for having Robert E. Lee lead the Army of Northern Virginia. He was partly his Southern drawl, partly his remarkable ability to distilling a point to its essence, and partly his mastery of words.

The great thing about this series is that even if you have read such classics as Douglas Southall Freeman's LEE'S LIEUTENANTS and his four-volume biography of Lee, McPherson's BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM, and Foote's THE CIVIL WAR, Burn's documentary will make the war come alive in a completely new and exciting way. This set will therefore be essential viewing for all serious students of the Civil War, as well as nearly anyone even remotely curious about American history, or, for that matter, great television.

Description of The Civil War - A Film by Ken Burns