The American Civil War details
| Format: | Ex DVD |
|---|---|
| Starring: | Pamela Reed, Laurence Fishburne, Laurence Fishburne, Jeremy Irons, Morgan Freeman, Arthur Miller, Jason Robards |
| Director: | Ken Burns |
| Genres: | Documentary, Television - Military |
| Studio: | SIMPLY HOME ENTERTAINMENT |
| Name | Discs | |
|---|---|---|
The American Civil War - Disc 1 |
TBC Disc 1 | |
The American Civil War - Disc 2 |
TBC Disc 2 | |
The American Civil War - Disc 3 |
TBC Disc 3 |
DVD Information
| Run time: | 11 hours 30 minutes |
|---|---|
| Rental release: | 07 Oct 2002 |
| Main languages: | English |
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Most helpful review
Very disappointing
By Strathray from London , 07 Jun 2005[Highly rated reviewer]
Like a lot of historical documentary series I have watched, this one represents a huge missed opportunity to present a thoughtful analysis of what happened and why, choosing instead to go for short soundbites of quotation and music. Worse, history itself is distorted for reasons of political correctness. The first programme claims that the only real issue in the war was slavery and that all else stemmed from this. This is simply not true and I can only assume that the American producers felt a need to expiate some kind of national slave guilt. In fact some slave states chose to stay with the Union and (at least initially) some northern states did not seek to abolish slavery, merely to limit its spread and to allow runaway slaves their freedom. Similarly, nowhere is it stated that Lincoln was at first reluctant to allow black units to serve in the Union army. Lincoln himself chose to turn slavery into an issue precisely because he was uneasy with the legality and morality of the real causus belli: the right of any state to self-determinism and therefore secession.- Was this review helpful to you?
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(26)Ken Burn American Civil War
By ChaosvOrder (6 reviews) from uk , 20 Feb 2011A very good documentary-not only does it give you the history of the war, but lets you into the minds of the people who took part through extracts from their diaries and letters written at the time. so good i went and bought it.- Was this review helpful to you?
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An Excellent Series, But Overlong For Some Viewers
By MrGiles2 (62 reviews) from Middlesbrough , 01 Nov 2010I first recall seeing this excellent series about the American Civil War a few years back. That was an edited edition, and I did find this a bit overlong which may not please some viewers.
Being a historian though, I was quite prepared to put up with that because there is so much detail here explaining a war which tore a nation apart between the years 1861-1865.
The first three episodes explore the reasons behind the war, the fight for State Rights between North and South, and the issue of slavery which was not the main reason for the war. All the major battles of 1861 and 1862 are covered. Some of them were extremely costly in lives and materials. Bull Run, Shiloh, Antietam Creek (where more men fell in a single day than on D-Day in 1944) and the long engagements around the Confederate Capital, Richmond which proved indecisive.
I look forward to seeing the rest of the series though. An excellent History series of one of the great conflicts in the 19thC.- Was this review helpful to you?
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Simply the best
By dodrade (21 reviews) from Strabane , 06 Jun 2010I was lucky enough to see this some years ago over christmas on BBC 2. It was and remains quite simply the best documentary series I have ever seen, and indeed only Ken Burns' later series The West comes close to matching it. An exhausive and enthralling epic which tells the viewer everything they would ever want to know about the war between the states, topped off by the golden voice of David McCullough, this is essential viewing for all history lovers. Word of warning though, avoid at all costs the repeats on Military History where the episodes have been brutally chopped to fit an hour minus ad breaks.- Was this review helpful to you?
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Superb
By a customer from LIVERPOOL , 31 Aug 2009This is a landmark in documentary films. Thoughtful, superbly edited and accurate.A colossal and entertaing use of anational archive.
Strathey from London's review is wildly inaccurate, not the series.I wonder if he actually watched it without his ideological goggles,The series gives MORE not less space to the specious state rights 'justification' than it deserves.
This is not the place to go into historiography but if he thinks the war was mainly about states rights he needs to read some proper history. As MacPherson and others have demonstrated, this was very much a back up argument during the formation of the confederacy. Keep the 'peculiar instituion', i.e slavery, was overwhelmingly the tone of meetings, editorials, posters, pamphlets etc in the period. The rest was hogwash and has been exagerrated to salve the conscience of the South fo the centruy of segregation- Was this review helpful to you?
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A good documentary
By Antollamh (49 reviews) from Sheffield , 03 Aug 2009As with Disc 1, a good documentary about the Civil War, but there is a lot of it, and I continued to fall asleep before the end of each part...- Was this review helpful to you?
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