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American Experience: The Donner Party

David McCullough , J.D. Cannon , Ric Burns    NR (Not Rated)   DVD
4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
Price: CDN$ 59.69
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Product Description

Amazon.ca

While brother Ken Burns was redefining mammoth entertainment with his public television events, brother Ric was creating tighter, more definitive documentaries such as The Donner Party, whose tragic subject has seemed more a punch line than a historical event. Yes, members of the Donner party ate human flesh when they were caught snowbound in the Sierra Nevadas just 150 miles away from the end of their 2,500-mile trip across the United States in 1843. But there's more to the story, and Burns uses the customary array of old pictures, current landscapes, and readings of historic dispatches and letters by actors (including Timothy Hutton, Amy Madigan, and Eli Wallach) to create a vivid portrayal of the pioneers' tough life. The heartbreaking circumstances of and miscues by the Donner party turned a common migration into one that is remembered as a landlocked Titanic tragedy. What if the snow had come one day later? What if the winter was not the worst on record? And most importantly, what if Lansford Hastings had not advertised a "shorter" West Coast route that he had never seen? Other details bring to light the human achievement of the survivors, including the intriguing fact that the women and children survived in greater number than the men. Anchored by the eerie music of Angelo Badalamenti's "Dark Spanish Symphony," the film constructs the fate of the Donner party as the gloomy side of the American dream. --Doug Thomas

Product Description

Of all the 19th-century pioneer stories, none exerts such a powerful hold on the American imagination as the tale of the Donner Party in the high Sierra Nevadas in the winter of 1846. The excursion became a terrifying tale of misery, death, madness, and cannibalism. Through family journals, newspaper accounts, and interviews with historians and descendants of the party, the program re-creates the Donner Party's now legendary journey.

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4.9 out of 5 stars
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A stunning tale of bad choices Oct 14 2003
Format:VHS Tape
It is hard to find words to describe this that haven't been used in many earlier reviews --- "haunting, mind-blowing, chilling," all come to mind.

Suffice it to say, everyone of us has had a moment in life where we could make the right choice or the wrong choice. All too often, making the wrong choice leads to more wrong choices. Most of the time, the results are unfortunate, and sometimes they are perilous. Rarely are the results as grisly as the fate that befell the Donner Party.

As another reviewer noted, these were not bumbling fools done in by their own incompetence. In fact, many members of the Donner Party were intelligent men & women who really should have known better. When sound decisions really counted, they consistently made the wrong choice, and these series of bad choices now means that most of us remember the Donner Party alone out of the thousands of wagon trains that went west in the 19th century.

It is an awesome documentary that will not be easily forgotten. The narrative & the music only augment the eerie, depressing quality of the production. Ultimately, it leaves all of us with that nagging question: what would we have done in that same situation?

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Haunting Tribute to Unknown Heroes July 31 2003
Format:DVD
The Donner Party has to be one of the best documentaries ever made, a tale of impossible hardship, a journey that tests the human endurance and puts a new meaning to the words, survival instinct.
I first watched the Donner Party on UK's Channel 4, way back in '92, with the title 'Death of a Wagon Train', and it really blew my mind, and I have been searching since then for it to no avail, until quite recently when I was pleasently surprised by its release on DVD. Thanks PBS.
In a way, we should consider ourselves lucky, for despite the atmosphere of anxiety and uncertainty that palgues the 21st century, our age offers us vast technological advances that makes life much easier in all aspects. Yet we do take so much for granted, for there was another time, a time of continious struggles to survive. The 1840s in the States was also, I would imagine a very exciting time, for along with the difficulties, there were dreams to seek a better life and fulfil them through uncharted and virgin territories, a vasteness that can devour as much as lead to 'eldorado'. The 'eldorado' in question was California, and emigrants way before the Gold Rush of the 1850s, rushed there to improve their lot and seek their fortunes.These people were really brave! To decide to leave the certainty of their established lives, and jump into the unknown needed a lot of courage! But it is this courage that made the emigrants of the Mayflower leave Plymouth, and it is this courage that made America the great power that it is today.
The Donner party was one of the unlucky ones, who decided against the advise of a more experienced tracker,to take a shorter route to 'eldorado',a mistake that would cost most of them their lives, and would push some to the darkest recesses of the human soul.While many emigrants successfully made it to California and rebuild their lives and rewritten the country's history in the process, most are fogotten. The fate of Donner Party on the other hand is not, not only because most failed to reach their destination, but because of the horrors that they experienced trying.
Ric Burns brilliantly captures this ill fated journey, through the letters of both the dead and few survivors (perfectly read with an errie tone), soundbites from historians (just a few), and beautiful cinematography that captures the beauty and hostility of the landscape. Brian Keane adds so much power with his gorgeous music.(I am still waiting for the soundtrack to be released, it is worth it!!!)
You have to buy the Donner Party and look in awe and fascination at the courage of early emigrants, and in sheer terror at the tests that the human being is put under and the lenght that he/she will go to to survive. Scary Indeed!
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars The Donner Party Dec 18 2001
By A Customer
Format:VHS Tape
Outstanding video that tells the tragic story of the ill-fated Donner Party and their attempt to move West in 1846. The story is tragic in the sense that just about anything that could go wrong, did go wrong for these people. I bought this video to show in my history classes several years ago and I still have not tired of it. More importantly, my students, year in and year out, become engrossed in the story of what people will do to survive and perservere and they watch and pay attention to the story. The descriptions of what the suvivors did to survive can be a bit graphic, but not overly so.
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Most recent customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating documentary
I too remember seeing this documentary on England's Channel 4 and was immediately impressed by the understated tone that let the central characters speak for themselves and the... Read more
Published on July 14 2004 by Toby Muse
5.0 out of 5 stars Heartbreaking true story of heroes and villains.
Murder happened in the Sierra-Nevada mountains in the winter of 1946/1947. This is the story of the fabled Donner Party. Read more
Published on Nov 26 2003 by "comfortablydumb"
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Presentation of a Tragic Story,
Highly recommended.

A very matter-of-fact approach to describing the tragic story of the Donner party. Heavy reliance on actual diaries and notes those involved. Read more

Published on Nov 9 2003 by CG
5.0 out of 5 stars ONE OF THE MOST TRAGIC TALES OF THE AMERICAN WEST
Like most people raised in the west I had heard the story of the Donner Party many times, though badly and inaccurately told. Read more
Published on Aug 25 2003
5.0 out of 5 stars White Arcades
The highest compliment that can be said of this video is that it haunted me for days after...

There has been talk of Angelo Badelamenti's atmospheric music for this video... Read more

Published on Jun 5 2002 by Flossy Gomez
5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding! A must see for everyone!
It seems people must focuse on the eating of flesh however, there is so much more to the story. The music by Angelo Badalamenti is stunning! This story of the journey is inspiring. Read more
Published on May 27 2002 by T. Singh
5.0 out of 5 stars An amazing documentary
If you don't know the story, you need to see this film. If you do, you need to see this film. Haunting, historical, beautifully acted (voice-overs). Read more
Published on Nov 9 2001 by John Borrelli
5.0 out of 5 stars Hauntingly powerful
You are there with the doomed members of the Donner Party as they migrate west to California, following a supposed shortcut promoted by a man who never actually traveled the path... Read more
Published on Oct 12 2001
5.0 out of 5 stars The Donner Party
The Donner Party documentary is a first class history lesson in our pioneer forebears and the hardships they endured in our nation's manifest destiny. Read more
Published on Aug 9 2001 by cynhia cameron
5.0 out of 5 stars Riveting viewing
I first saw "The Donner Party" during it's initial showing on PBS and it caused me to think about the question of what would I do under the same circumstances. Read more
Published on Jun 5 2001 by Thomas M. Olevano
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