American Experience: FDR
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Movie Reviews of American Experience: FDR
Movie Review: Excellent PBS production
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the best documentary on the life both pre white house and during the presidency of FDR that I have ever seen. The bits with the presidents grandson are especially insightful.Movie Review: Excellent
Summary: 5 Stars
Excellent portrayal of an extraordinary amazing president's life, one of the greatest this county will ever have.Movie Review: Excellent for history project
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a great video to watch if you're writing a paper on FDR or taking a quiz or a test.Movie Review: FDR
Summary: 5 Stars
This was a touching biography. If you're an FDR fan, you'll want to have this.Movie Review: worth getting but...
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm surprised to be the first person to review this. Roosevelt is such an important historic figure, and his struggle to overcome polio in itself makes an absorbing story of personal courage and determination. Add to that the fascinating story of Eleanor Roosevelt and her gradual decision to make a life for herself and you have the right mix for a powerful film.
This has some good footage, though there is a major howler when a photograph of a speech by British Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson (at the Lord Mayor of London's dinner in the late 1960's?)is presented as a speech by Roosevelt as Governor of New York (towards the end of disc 1 - how did the editors let pass such a mistake!).
David Grubin, as always, makes a moving film, but it left me dissatisfied (as did his RFK). There was far too much of the personal story, far too little of the public for a figure whose impact on the political and economic world over 12 years of depression and war was phenomenal. Is there something in the US psyche which needs to have a good cry over their heroes - Grubin's documentary on RFK was the same? Frank Capra movies and David Grubin documentaries can tell you a lot about liberal sentiment. Doris Kearns Goodwin is the worst for this sort of stuff (I find her attactive and pleasant to listen to, but how does she actually know what Eleanor was feeling over FDR's body?).
The interesting fact, once pointed out in this film, is that FDR was a maddening and cunning liar. The roots of that in his relationship with his mother - loving but evaisive and manipulative - are indicated here in the strong early part of the film. most politicians are liars - they have to be to survive - but FDR was a master liar and schemer. This is not necessarily a condemnation. But it raises a point which is never taken up. When the Greer was attacked in the summer of 1941, FDR lied and claimed it was an unprovoked attack by a Nazi sub..he covered up the truth that the Greer had been stalking the sub and reporting to British ships on its whereabouts. Now FDR lied for the good. We all - well, most of us - agree with FDR that the Nazis were a real enemy to the US, and that the US public were reluctant to acknowledge the fact. So FDR lied for the good. He usually lied for the good, in my view. But when LBJ did the same thing over the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, he was condemned. The Grubin film does look at the Greer incident, but the moral question is not raised.
Nor is the way in which the nature of liberalism changed under FDR, from its concern with monopoly and capitalist crisis to a rights-based concern with African Americans. But wait - Alan Brinkley, a historian who has argued this, is one of the historical consultants. And weren't there major race riots in Detroit in 1943? and "zoot-suit" riots in Los Angeles in 1942? or, for that matter, sit-down strikes in 1937?? You wouldn't guess any of this here..just a couple of minutes on the fact that some Americans looked to Huey Long etc rather than FDR.
So..I await a new generation of historical documentaries. The first generation started with the BBC series, The Great War, which showed how a powerful topic could be treated with emotional power and great depth. The second arrived with Ken Burns, with his brilliant use of letters and speeches to add emotional depth to the American Civil War. As Yet, David Grubin can make a moving, even weepie, set of documentaries, but we need one to make us think critically