"New York: A Documentary Film" (1999) TV series

User Rating:

9.3/10   

Seasons:

1

Release Date:

14 November 1999 (USA)

Genre:

Documentary | History

Plot:

Ric Burns (brother of the famed documentarian Ken Burns) presents an exhaustive history of New York...

Plot Keywords:

City | New York | New York City | Italian American | Plane Crash

Awards:

Won Primetime Emmy. Another 1 win & 3 nominations

Cast

David Ogden Stiers	...	Narrator (7 episodes, 1999)
John Steele Gordon	...	Himself (7 episodes, 1999)
Kenneth Jackson	...	Himself (7 episodes, 1999)
Robert A.M. Stern	...	Himself (7 episodes, 1999)
Mike Wallace	...	Himself (historian) (7 episodes, 1999)
Philip Bosco		(6 episodes, 1999)
Brendan Gill	...	Himself (6 episodes, 1999)
David McCullough	...	Himself (6 episodes, 1999)
Rev. Calvin O. Butts III	...	Himself (5 episodes, 1999)
Robert A. Caro	...	Himself (5 episodes, 1999)
Pete Hamill	...	Himself (5 episodes, 1999)
Alfred Kazin	...	Himself (5 episodes, 1999)
George Plimpton		(5 episodes, 1999)
Luc Sante	...	Himself (5 episodes, 1999)
Craig Steven Wilder	...	Himself (5 episodes, 1999)
Marshall Berman	...	Himself (4 episodes, 1999)
Daniel Czitrom	...	Himself (4 episodes, 1999)
Paul Giamatti	...	Narrator (4 episodes, 1999)
Rudolph W. Giuliani	...	Himself (4 episodes, 1999)
Fran Lebowitz	...	Herself (4 episodes, 1999)
Robert Sean Leonard		(4 episodes, 1999)
Peter Quinn	...	Himself (4 episodes, 1999)
Callie Thorne	...	Voice (4 episodes, 1999)
Eli Wallach		(4 episodes, 1999)
Caleb Carr	...	Himself (3 episodes, 1999)
Keith David		(3 episodes, 1999)
Allen Ginsberg	...	Himself (3 episodes, 1999)
Spalding Gray	...	Himself (3 episodes, 1999)
James Hazeldine		(3 episodes, 1999)
David Levering Lewis	...	Himself (3 episodes, 1999)
Philip Lopate	...	Himself (3 episodes, 1999)
Daniel Patrick Moynihan	...	Himself (3 episodes, 1999)
Frances Sternhagen		(3 episodes, 1999)
John Kuo Wei Tchen	...	Himself (3 episodes, 1999)
Donald Trump	...	Himself (3 episodes, 1999)
Carol Willis	...	Herself (3 episodes, 1999)
Ruth J. Abram	...	Herself (2 episodes, 1999)
Bella Abzug	...	Herself (2 episodes, 1999)
Thomas Bender	...	Himself (2 episodes, 1999)
Joshua Freeman	...	Himself (2 episodes, 1999)
Janeane Garofalo	...	Herself (2 episodes, 1999)
Frances Golden	...	Himself (2 episodes, 1999)
Cheryl Greenberg	...	Himself (2 episodes, 1999)
Josh Hamilton		(2 episodes, 1999)
Ada Louise Huxtable	...	Herself (2 episodes, 1999)
Margo Jefferson	...	Herself (2 episodes, 1999)
Frederic Kimball	...	Voice (2 episodes, 1999)
Edward I. Koch	...	Himself (2 episodes, 1999)
David Margulies	...	Voice (2 episodes, 1999)
Frank Pellegrino	...	Himself (2 episodes, 1999)
Anna Quindlen	...	Herself (2 episodes, 1999)
Susan Sarandon		(2 episodes, 1999)
Gretchen Sullivan Sorin	...	Herself (2 episodes, 1999)
Ray Suarez	...	Himself (2 episodes, 1999)
Harris Yulin		(2 episodes, 1999)

Also Known As:

"American Experience: New York - A Documentary Film" (USA)

Runtime:

600 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Filming Locations:

New York City, New York, USA

Company:

New York Historical Society

Trivia:

Filming took nearly four years and over 170 days including interviews, shooting archival footage, and New York landscapes.

Quotes:

voice: Most of the big shore places were closed now. And there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of the ferryboat across the sound. And as the moon rose higher, the inessential houses began to melt away till gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes...

Movie Connections:

Features In the Street (1948)

The 600-Minute-Long Story of New York

There is much I like about this documentary film. The early history of New York as a Dutch trading post, its role in the War of Independence, and the importance of the Erie Canal are especially interesting because they are unfamiliar. The use of contemporary writings throughout immerse you in the period. The film is exhaustively illustrated with maps, paintings, and drawings for the early period, and with photos and film footage as technology--and the City--advances.

The lazy pace of the film irked me. A transcript would reveal that the film's content could easily be compressed. The languor of the narrative is the antithesis of the City's bustle. Much is repeated by a parade of historians recounting in turn each episode of New York's past. Many of the contemporary writings used in the film do not originate from the protagonists in New York's history, but merely from clerics or journalists.

Certainly, the film is worth seeing. I can't wait til my return to New York this fall to revisit the storied sites described in the film. I have no doubt the filmmakers left much interview footage on the cutting room floor. But their efforts would have been better rewarded with even more trimming of duplicated narration, glacially slow photo pans, and extended transitions.

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