The American Civil War

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Television series
German title The American Civil War
Original title The Civil War
Country of production United States
original language English (AE)
year 1990
length 680 (total) minutes
Episodes 9 in 1 season
genre documentation
Theme music Ashokan Farewell
idea Ken Burns
production Ken Burns and Ric Burns
music Jay Ungar
First broadcast Sep 23, 1990 (USA) on PBS
German-language
first broadcast		 1992 on WDR
occupation

US version only

synchronization

German processing

German speakers

The American Civil War (English original title “The Civil War” ) is an eleven-hour documentary in nine parts by the US American Ken Burns from 1990. The film, produced by the non-commercial US television chain PBS , has won several awards , including an Emmy - excellent.

Content and technology

The documentary describes the causes, beginning, course, end and consequences of the American Civil War (1861–1865) in great detail, using individual fates that have been selected as examples . The people who have their say range from simple soldiers of the northern and southern states , women, (former) slaves , urban and rural populations to the military leaders on both sides Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee as well as the President Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis . People cited include Walt Whitman , Stonewall Jackson , Frederick Douglass , among others . Excerpts from the diaries of Mary Chesnut , Sam Watkins , Elisha Hunt Rhodes, and George Templeton Strong play an important role.

Burns used around 16,000 contemporary photographs, diary entries , letters, newspaper reports, etc. for this work - typical for his documentaries - which created an authentic atmosphere. In connection with a Burns-specific camera work, the atmosphere achieved in this way is now referred to as the Ken Burns effect .

An (invisible) narrator (in the US original Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough ) “leads” through the entire film . While photos of people, places, battles, etc. are shown, contemporary quotes, anecdotes or the like are presented in a voice-over process by different speakers (originally well-known American actors and writers) . It is also remarkable that the historical persons are always "represented" by the same voice . The calm sequence of images is occasionally interrupted by recordings by historians such as Shelby Foote , James M. McPherson , Barbara J. Fields , Ed Bearss or Stephen B. Oates , who comment on the scenes or events from their point of view.

Film music

Burns used music from the Civil War as background music. Only the title theme "Ashokan Farewell" by the American composer Jay Ungar was composed in 1982. It is a waltz in D major , played first by a solo - violin , later a guitar is accompanied. Its use as the film's title theme - especially during the reading of Sullivan Ballou's farewell letter to his wife, which Sullivan Ballou wrote a few days before the First Battle of the Bull Run - made it well known and is therefore often used today, albeit incorrectly, for a piece of music kept from the American Civil War era.

Follow & content

The film, which lasts more than eleven hours, is divided into nine parts:

reception

The film is considered Burns' masterpiece and received the following awards: the Emmy , the most important US television award, the Humanitas Prize , the Peabody Award and the Prize of the Television Critics Association . When it was first broadcast in September 1990, it was seen by around 40 million people in the USA and is still the PBS show with the highest audience rating .

DVD

The film has been available on DVD since 2006 .

literature

  • Monika Hey and Adelheid Zöfel: The Civil War - The American Civil War , manuscript for the series of the West German Broadcasting and Bavarian Broadcasting, TELE manuscript service, TR-Verlagsunion München, 1992
  • Geoffrey C. Ward, Ric Burns, Ken Kurns: The Civil War - An Illustrated History , illustrated book to accompany the series, ISBN 0-394-56285-2 , American Documentaries, 1990

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Name corresponds to that of the first broadcast in 1992, s. Table of contents by Monika Hey and Adelheid Zöfel: The Civil War - The American Civil War , manuscript for the series of the West German Radio and the Bavarian Radio

Web links