The Civil War: A Film by Ken Burns
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The Civil War: A Film by Ken Burns

1990, Military and War  -   6 Comments
7.78
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Ratings: 7.78/10 from 58 users.

The Civil War - A Film by Ken Burns (1990)War may be hell, but it can make for great television, as Ken Burns proves in his masterful 11-hour PBS series chronicling the deadliest war in American military history. The Civil War was a landmark TV event that held record numbers of viewers riveted to their screens and reinvented the documentary form. Taking full advantage of the fact that the Civil War was the first war to be captured extensively on camera, Burns synthesizes evocative archival photographs (among them, Matthew Brady's emblematic images of Union soldiers) with diverse and illuminating narrative voices.

Well-known actors read diary entries, letters from the front, official dispatches, and speeches from the era. These voice-over readings convey the full range of human fears and hopes of those shaping and being shaped by the war, while an engaging group of historians (most notably Shelby Foote) provide historical perspective.

The result is a seamless collage that illuminates, with quiet nobility, this most painful chapter in our nation's past. It's been said that history belongs to the victors; like Homer before him, Burns demonstrates that a major chunk of it belongs to the best storytellers.

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Barry Wolfield
Barry Wolfield
4 months ago

This was an incredibly insightful documentary. While history may not be exciting for all viewers, the timeline and layout of this series was excellent.

Mark Parcells
Mark Parcells
3 years ago

A truly transformative documentary series, that personalized a war we had only heard of in school, with various battles and personalities related by teachers, if we were lucky. This series changed the form and set the standard for all documentaries to come, and held a yardstick by which all previous ones have been measured. Each episode moves you to tears. Incredible. That this isn't a 10 is a sad statement to how jaded and how short our attention spans have become.

David W Kugel
David W Kugel
4 years ago

This excellent documentary series is a 7.6? It should be a 9.5.

William Keefer
William Keefer
12 years ago

I believe his documentary "Prohibition " should be shown in every high school just to show for once how this country is controlled by only a few and twisting the untruths into facts. As Ken Burns says in his appearance on CSpan. "Human nature never changes.

Dag_Sabot
Dag_Sabot
12 years ago

Good to see Ken still pimping his documentary, after all these years.