For All Mankind (Full Screen) (The Criterion Collection)

'Deep blue Day' by Brian Eno and intermittant musical inserts lasting only a view seconds (which previously transported the viewer away from the immediate scene with the Astronauts) have all been removed - the magic has been squeezed out of this classic piece of video/doc architecture by a company who have done the equivalent of a painting a moustache on a classic oil with a black felt tip pin!

Please cure my depression with some info on how I can get my hands on the original classic version on DVD or VHS? (unmutilated)!

Bill Andrews

This film is a documentary and is well compiled. Consisting almost entirely of stock footage of the missions, it has audio interviews with the astronauts and mission control technicians.

The film has a superb score by Brian Eno. One particular piece of music in the film, also heard on the main menu of the DVD has been resued for two other films: Traffic (2000) and 28 Days Later(2002).

Much of the footage taken in space is high resolution and very well preserved as it was stored at the NASA film archives in liquid nitrogen.

The special features on the DVD are audio commentary by the Director Al Reinart and Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan. There is subtitle identification of the astronauts and NASA employees when they appear on screen. There are Audio and Video highlights from several NASA missions. My favorite is the soundbyte of the apollo 8 astronauts when they gave a radio address by reading parts of the Bible on Christmas day.

There are also paintings by Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean and interviews with him describing some of his paintings.

For anybody interested in the space program, this DVD is a musy buy!

What makes this unique is that it allows the knowledgable/obsessed Apollo fan the opportunity to look at these early images of Apollo (and Gemini) footage from the perspective of an artist. Though the film of Ed White's EVA has come under scrutiny due to the fact that it was before Apollo, yet the footage has been enhanced so that it looks sharper and clearer than the original. The footage that has been pieced together contains images that are obscure and commentary that is rare and personal, reflecting the personalities of the men who made these remarkable voyages. It is truly a delight to hear of Pete Conrad's explanation of why he made his "historic" first words when he became the third man on the moon, or to hear Charlie Duke sharing his dream that he had while on the lunar surface.

Al Reinhardt is a dramatic director, not a documentary director and this is evident in this work. Apollo buffs are probably aware that he directed two episodes for the HBO miniseries, "From the Earth to the Moon," depicting the Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 missions. I believe that this is a must see series for the space enthusiast as well, for this miniseries depicts the Apollo program at its worst and best, the men and women who made it happen and does so in the best movie traditions.

For All Mankind is a movie event that does what the astronauts had such a difficult time expressing: by watching these men in flight and on the moon, one can get a better experience of what it felt like to go to the moon. Unfortunately, these men were scientists, test pilots and engineers. They were not poets or dreamers, they were the doers of our world and these modern day "Renaissance Men" were not able to share the emotion that many of us would have experienced in their boots. I tip my helmet to Al Reinhardt for giving us a glimpse of what it felt like to go there.