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

User Rating:

9.2/10   

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 City | Italian American | Irish American | Tragedy

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) (alternative title)

Runtime:

600 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Filming Locations:

New York City, New York, USA

Company:

New York Historical Society

Trivia:

Originally, the film was to be a seven-episode documentary. After the World Trade Center was destroyed in the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, an eighth episode - "The Center of the World" about the rise and fall of the Twin Towers - was made. It aired September 8, 2003.

Quotes:

Narrator: On September 2nd, 1609, an English explorer hired by the Dutch to find a faster route to the riches of the Orient steered his 80 ton ship off the surging currents of the North Atlantic and into an immense sheltered bay. Sailing into the mouth of the mile-wide river that flowed into it from the north, he pushed 100 miles upstream, hoping it led to China. It didn't.

Movie Connections:

Features In the Street (1948)

an elephantine story of one of the crucial cities of the mast thousand years (or more)

Sure Ric Burns (related directly to TV-documentary maestro Ken) may not provide a documentary that is outright 'entertaining' like a Michael Moore film, or isn't strangely engaging in its montage like Errol Morris' The Fog of War, but he understands something that all good documentary filmmakers know. If you get your subject down, and what story of the subject you want to tell, the rest is just history, literally. And if you are a history buff at all, or just interested in the tales and lineage and drama that made what is New York City what it is today, this is the documentary to see. Of course, it's not an easy feat; like his brother Kens's Jazz documentary, New York is split up into seemingly countless hours of detail, going over its 300+ year history, from the days of Henry Hudson, to the Revolution, the the draft riots (covered brilliantly in Gangs of New York), the trials and tribulations of the immigrants, and leading up to 9/11.

It's basically the kind of documentary in which once you see one part of it, say part 2 covering 1830 to the 1870, or part 5 covering the early 1900's, and you want to see more, you'll know what you're getting. One could criticize the over-abundance of dramatic, TV-esquire music, the emphasis on piling on the weight on certain subjects over others, or that (ironically) the time given still isn't enough. But as one interviewee says, there is not one definitive book or books by an author that give a totally clear idea of what New York was like in such a time and place or another. For someone who has been to the Apple countless times, seen many of Manhattan and Bronx's sites, and recognized that New York carries with it the residue of dozens of passing generations and cultures and tragedies and joys, this serves as THE documentary, at least with information terms, what New York was. At the least, you can impress (some of) your friends and family with bits of information, like about Alexander Hamilton or how the formation of all the NYC roads were built, or the bits within the massive scope of the immigration stories.