The turning point in the battle between North and South during the Civil War, the 3-day battle at Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863) was also the most costly single battle--in terms of lives lost--America ever fought. In about 72 hours, some 51,000 Americans lost their lives. To put that number in perspective, some 58,000 died during the entire course of the Vietnam War. Although the Civil War has held a fascination for many over the years, the groundswell of public interest can be traced to one phenomenal documentary series that not only set the standard for future documentaries on historical subjects but also changed the way documentaries were made: Ken Burns' The Civil War. Burns himself has a small part in what promises to be the biggest Civil War related event of the year, Turner Home Entertainment's 4-hour plus epic Gettysburg, which is a docudrama, not a documentary. Based on the late Michael Shaara's evocative Pulitzer-prize winning 1974 novel The Killer Angels, Turner's cast-of-thousands recreation of the 3-day battle is big...but not much else. Adapted and directed by Ronald F. Maxwell, whose previous credits include such unnotables as Little Darlings and KIDCO, the film sets out to bludgeon viewers into emotional involvement from the opening using TV-movie shorthand (and Turner's first theatrical feature seems just like a big TV-movie): blaring and incessant music and plenty of explosions. Fake beards, worse Southern accents, and contractual camera lingering on Martin Sheen (who plays Robert E. Lee as if he were a dazed and confused seer), Tom Berenger (who, as Lee's favorite commander James Longstreet, at least has the accent down), and a perennially scowling Sam Elliott (playing John Buford, and acting as if he's accidentally walked off the pages of a Louis L'Amour novel) make Gettysburg tough slogging, indeed. What's worse is that screenwriter/director Maxwell takes many of novelist Shaara's effective stream-of-consciousness passages and translates them into ineffective and rather silly sounding dialogue. Gettysburg gets better as it goes along--maybe the sheer time investment involved makes one determined to squeeze rewards out. Some characters--Jeff Daniels' Lawrence Chamberlain, and the late Richard Jordan's "Lo" Armistead, in particular--are well-acted. The battle scenes while more concerned with size than artistry are long enough to sate the interest of most action fans (and bore those more interested in story). Ultimately, however, one needs only to look at Matthew Brady's eloquently painful photographs from the war to see what Turner "Home Entertainment" has missed: the senseless anonymity of broken bodies heaped on a battlefield. That's the real story.Gettysburg "in hell or glory," written and directed by Dan Treanor, is mainly comprised of video footage of Civil War Reenactors recreating various fights in the 3-day Battle of Gettysburg. Occasional photographs, a musical soundtrack, and overlaid narration are combined with the dramatic sequences (which were filmed in 6 states over a 4-year period). Numerous similarities between Treanor's script and the script for the fifth episode in Ken Burns' The Civil War series prompted me to call Mr. Treanor, who read me segments from Battles and Leaders and other standard reference works which he (and The Civil War scriptwriter) used nearly verbatim. Writers cringe over that kind of thing, but the historical descriptions are the historical descriptions and they don't change. Ultimately, while the information is solid, the re-enactments would appeal primarily to serious Civil War buffs, since the uninitiated would have difficulty following what was in fact a large and complicated battle consisting of many interlocking arenas.Again, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, than filmmaker Bryon Caplan is also very taken by Ken Burns' The Civil War since his video biography Meade of Gettysburg uses a similar approach of zooming into and out of archival photographs, voiceovers of actors reading letter and diary excerpts, period music, artillery sound effects, and overlaid narration to tell the story of George Gordon Meade, the reluctant general who was appointed head of the Union just prior to the opening of the Battle of Gettysburg. Although Grant would later be appointed as the overseer of the Union forces, Meade would remain the head of the Army of the Potomac. He would, sadly, be left out of the surrender proceedings at Appomattox and, since he held no political ambitions, he faded into the background until his death in 1872. Although the scarcity of photographs of Meade mean that the same pictures are used over and over again, Meade of Gettysburg is a good production overall.Gettysburg the movie is likely to be popular, and libraries should purchase according to demand. Gettysburg "in hell and glory" is an optional purchase. Meade of Gettysburg is recommended for strong military collections. (R. Pitman)
Gettysburg; Gettysburg In Hell Or Glory; Meade Of Gettysburg
(1993) 254 min. (on 2 videocassettes). $89.98. Turner Home Entertainment. Color cover. Closed captioned. Vol. 9, Issue 2
Gettysburg; Gettysburg In Hell Or Glory; Meade Of Gettysburg
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