Product Description

Of all the 19th-century pioneer stories, none exerts such a powerful hold on the American imagination as the tale of the Donner Party in the high Sierra Nevadas in the winter of 1846. The excursion became a terrifying tale of misery, death, madness, and cannibalism. Through family journals, newspaper accounts, and interviews with historians and descendants of the party, the program re-creates the Donner Party's now legendary journey.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #78641 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-01-14
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 90 minutes

Amazon.com
While brother Ken Burns was redefining mammoth entertainment with his public television events, brother Ric was creating tighter, more definitive documentaries such as The Donner Party, whose tragic subject has seemed more a punch line than a historical event. Yes, members of the Donner party ate human flesh when they were caught snowbound in the Sierra Nevadas just 150 miles away from the end of their 2,500-mile trip across the United States in 1846. But there's more to the story, and Burns uses the customary array of old pictures, current landscapes, and readings of historic dispatches and letters by actors (including Timothy Hutton, Amy Madigan, and Eli Wallach) to create a vivid portrayal of the pioneers' tough life. The heartbreaking circumstances of and miscues by the Donner party turned a common migration into one that is remembered as a landlocked Titanic tragedy. What if the snow had come one day later? What if the winter was not the worst on record? And most importantly, what if Lansford Hastings had not advertised a "shorter" West Coast route that he had never seen? Other details bring to light the human achievement of the survivors, including the intriguing fact that the women and children survived in greater number than the men. Anchored by the eerie music of Angelo Badalamenti's "Dark Spanish Symphony," the film constructs the fate of the Donner party as the gloomy side of the American dream. --Doug Thomas

Customer Reviews

A stunning tale of bad choices
It is hard to find words to describe this that haven't been used in many earlier reviews --- "haunting, mind-blowing, chilling," all come to mind.

Suffice it to say, everyone of us has had a moment in life where we could make the right choice or the wrong choice. All too often, making the wrong choice leads to more wrong choices. Most of the time, the results are unfortunate, and sometimes they are perilous. Rarely are the results as grisly as the fate that befell the Donner Party.

As another reviewer noted, these were not bumbling fools done in by their own incompetence. In fact, many members of the Donner Party were intelligent men & women who really should have known better. When sound decisions really counted, they consistently made the wrong choice, and these series of bad choices now means that most of us remember the Donner Party alone out of the thousands of wagon trains that went west in the 19th century.

It is an awesome documentary that will not be easily forgotten. The narrative & the music only augment the eerie, depressing quality of the production. Ultimately, it leaves all of us with that nagging question: what would we have done in that same situation?

ONE OF THE MOST TRAGIC TALES OF THE AMERICAN WEST
Like most people raised in the west I had heard the story of the Donner Party many times, though badly and inaccurately told. In fact, the Donner Party was in many cases the butt of many a bad joke rather than the historic and tragic story that should have been told.

I blundered onto the Burns' Donner Party documentary on my local PBS station and was immediately corrected of years of misconception.

Here is the story, not of a bunch of bumbling fools who planned things badly and suffered the consequences, but rather of a group of well-meaning pioneers who were doomed by the benighted vision of an enterprising fool named Lansford W. Hastings. Bad information led to bad decisions and ultimately to the most tragic of consequences.

A marvelous story of the indomitable human spirit and beautifully narrated by David McCulloch (author of Truman, John Adams), The Donner Party will be a haunting addition to the most complete western video collection. This one can absolutely not be missed.

A chilling depiction of a real-life horror story!
I first saw this incredible documentary as a child & for several nights afterwords I had terrible nightmares! This is one of the finest PBS documentaries I've ever seen, & it's also one of the most grusome tales in American history. While dozens of books have been written about the Donner Party, I believe this is the only documentary that's been made about it so far. The story is told through eyewitness accounts that make you feel like a member of the doomed wagon train. What's even more interesting is how the weary survivors rebuilt their lives after returning to "civilization". If you want compelling, horrifying, & unforgettable entertainment, this is the documentary to get!