Product Description

Hailed as a film masterpiece and landmark in historical storytelling, Ken Burns's epic documentary brings to life America's most destructive-- and defining--conflict. With digitally enhanced images and new stereo sound, here is the saga of celebrated generals and ordinary soldiers, a heroic and transcendent president and a country that had to divide itself in two in order to become one.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20719 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-09-17
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Box set, Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 5
• Running time: 680 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
The most successful public-television miniseries in American history, the 11-hour Civil War didn't just captivate a nation, reteaching to us our history in narrative terms; it actually also invented a new film language taken from its creator. When people describe documentaries using the "Ken Burns approach," its style is understood: voice-over narrators reading letters and documents dramatically and stating the writer's name at their conclusion, fresh live footage of places juxtaposed with still images (photographs, paintings, maps, prints), anecdotal interviews, and romantic musical scores taken from the era he depicts. The Civil War uses all of these devices to evoke atmosphere and resurrect an event that many knew only from stale history books. While Burns is a historian, a researcher, and a documentarian, he's above all a gifted storyteller, and it's his narrative powers that give this chronicle its beauty, overwhelming emotion, and devastating horror. Using the words of old letters, eloquently read by a variety of celebrities, the stories of historians like Shelby Foote and rare, stained photos, Burns allows us not only to relearn and finally understand our history, but also to feel and experience it. --Dave McCoy

DVD features
The DVD features on The Civil War provide a wealth of insight, creative philosophy, historical perspective, and educational enjoyment. Twelve years after its premiere broadcast, the film was given a digital facelift, sharpening image clarity, correcting color, and enriching its soundtrack with a remastered 5.1-channel mix, as demonstrated in the "Civil War Reconstruction" featurette. In interviews from 2002, producer-director Ken Burns, historian Shelby Foote, journalist George Will, author Stanley Crouch, and composer-musicians Jay Ungar and Molly Mason reflect upon The Civil War's enduring significance. And Burns's eloquent commentary--selectively included on each disc and totaling five hours--illuminates the historical importance and creative impulse behind crucial chapters of the film. Fifty-seven onscreen biography cards detail important North, South, and civilian figures, and two 1990 featurettes—"Making History" and "A Conversation with Ken Burns"--provide a more personal perspective on the creation of this extraordinary film. Useful for both personal and academic study, these features stand as a fitting supplement to one of the greatest documentaries ever produced. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

Can I give it More than 5 stars?
I remember watching this documentary by Ken Burns when it first appeared on PBS in 1990. It started my lifelong interest in the Civil War. Countless books and trips to battlefields later, it still stands as the finest general work on the war ever made.

The story of the war is told through pictures, narratives, and the unobtrusive narration by David McCoulough, who's voice is pitch pefect for the job. Never before have photos had such a dramatic effect in telling a story. They say a picture says a thousand words, and this series prove that maxim correct. The five discs cover the 5 years of the war, and the 9 parts of teh series. The most effective are "1861: The Cause", "1863: The Universe of Battle", and "1865: The Better Angels of our Nature". They cover the events that led up to the war, the turining points at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, and the end and aftermath of the war. Each is suprememly emotional. One episode intersperses an old narrative from the daughter of a former slave as she remembers her father's stories. Shelby Foote, author of the most comprehensive book on the war, offers invaluable advice. High praise must also go to Sam Waterston, who voices Abraham Lincoln. In the final segment of the 1863 disc, Waterston recites the Gettysburg Address, and I must admit it brought me to tears.

The music is also a key factor to the success of the film. Burns went back and found the old music that was popular among the people and the soldiers, both North & South during the war. It is moving, from the haunting opening music, to the old spirituals that are found on disc 2's "1862: Forever Free". Add that to a stable of great voice actors, (besides Waterston, Morgan Freeman as Frederick Douglass and George Plimpton as George Tempelton Strong are standouts), and the film becomes almost magical, transporting the viewer to those 4 horrible years that changed the Nation forever.

The Civil War is the most important saga in American History, and this documentary gives the people who fought it and the effect the War had on the US as a people the proper historical weight and respect. It deserves a place on any amatuer historians shelf.

Should Be In Everyone's Collection
Whereas critics may have chirped at Ken Burns' other documentaries like 'Jazz' or 'New York', there is virtually universal praise for this single, spectacular masterpiece. Not only is the Civil War brought to life but by the end of the entire 11 hour series you feel like you've been through the war itself.

The most important achievement of the documentary is showing how the war, with all its carnage, achieved the higher purpose of freeing the slaves. While the war may have started with the notion of keeping the tattered union together, it eventually brought societal, constitutional, economic, and medical changes that would have otherwise not come about had their not been a war. It truly was the birth of a "new freedom".

You watch as new innovative tactics are introduced out of sheer necessity. You see thousands of men using outdated tactics (charging a defense line with your bayonet) are mowed down by new weapons such as the gattling gun and the Repeating Rifle. You witness the banality of siege warfare as implemented by Gen. George McClellan. And you contrast that with maneuver warfare brilliantly executed by Stonewall Jackson and Nathan Bedford Forrest. You learn how the generals (and the country at large) grew to appreciate and utilize the telegram. You learn from General Lee how to lead from the front and how a few men effectively positioned can hold off 100 men. You witness how incompetent Union generals nearly lost the war to an inferior army. With only a rudimentary understanding in medicine, tens of thousands died from disease and from reparable surface wounds. However, without the enormous loss of life, we would have never made the medical and tactical advances that the war brought on.

More than any other character in the documentary, I enjoyed historian Shelby Foote the most. His amusing Mississippi drawl and the way he personalized the war made you realize the humanity of these legendary figures. He also highlighted how resentment towards blacks lasted for decades after the war (how the south still hates Lincoln, how Vicksburg refused to celebrate 4th of July for 80 years). You cannot possibly begin to understand US History until you have faithfully studied the Civil War. Thank you Ken Burns.

A must for anyone�s video collection.
I could kick myself for not recording this PBS special when it aired almost ten years ago. Luckily, I was able to purchase this magnificent documentary, and I can tell you all that it is well worth the steep purchase price.

Ken Burns' artistic creation seems to be the standard by which all other documentary films are judged. It was a landmark film disecting a very complex subject. Using actors to read actual letters and quoting dialog from the war's participants, while showing the viewer startling photographs from the war, was a brilliant stroke. And the commentaries sprinkled throughout by the historians, especially Foote, gleaned an insight not often found in documentary films, and brought vividly to life the great battles and the terrible human cost that the people of the era (both male and female / north and south) had suffered.

If one wants to see how our nation grew up and is the country we have today, look no further than this epic as a starting point. I would also recommend the four-hour movie "Gettysburg", taken almost word-for-word from the late Michael Shaara's pulitzer prize novel "The Killer Angels", as a fine companion piece.

"The Civil War" documentary (nine video tapes--approximately 15 hours of viewing time) is a fine beginning for anyone thirsting for knowledge about our history. Those interested in the "Old West" may also get an insight, or at least an understanding, of where some of the most notorious outlaws and lawmen sprang, and possibly why they felt human life was so dirt-cheap.

Between 1 and 10, "The Civil War" rates the highest level possible. If films like these were available when I was going to school, maybe I wouldn't have napped so often in history class.