| | Movie - The West
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PBS released this 12 1/2 hour project in 1996, from Ken Burns and Stephen Ives. Fortunately the VHS was only one snippet of the whole thing. The project begins before European settlement, and continues through the 20th century, but this peice just covers the gold rush era.
Most of the historical facts are presented chronologically, helped along by a center story about one man (voiced by Matthew Broderick) who kept a detailed diary while he left New York for California, and eventually returned home with no more money than he left.
Lots of people died. From the rough trails west, to the bandits robbing wealth, to the crazy white people attempting to exterminate those silly indians. Apparently California used to have laws where you could make any indian under the age of 18 your slave with the signature of a "friend."
Lots of people went to get rich, very few miners actually did. But the whores and bankers came out of the whole thing fairly well.
The VHS had good photos that it used to show people of the time, and articulate points, but I felt that the filmakers made a needlessly risky, and fatal decision when they went against the norm and didn't use any actual film footage of the time. Interest could have been held much better with "moving pictures" as some like to call them. They also could have left out the part about the Chinese, except maybe the part about the one chinaman opening a laundry shop.
Thumbs Down.
- Schneider
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| | Posted 2/21/2007 3:34 AM - 22 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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