Each of the documentaries offers viewers the chance to see each mans political and personal triumphs, as well as their tragedies. Interviews with friends (and in some cases family) and people who worked with the President, gives a real sense of the mood of the country leading up to each election. The interviewees give tremendous insight into what it was like inside the White House during some of America’s most troubled times–the death of FDR, Truman’s decision to launch the bomb on Hiroshima, the Cuban Missile crisis, Richard Nixon trying to hold on to the Presidency, as Watergate closed in on him. All these issues and more are discusse3d in remarkable depth in The American Experience – The Presidents Collection.
One thing I found was that these American Experience documentaries never seem to take sides; each one paints a full picture of the man. For instance, while it is true that Nixon was for to resign from office because of the Watergate scandal, which is only one aspect of his life. We learn about his hardscrabble life in Whittier California, his family and subsequent rise through the political ranks. Only by getting a full picture of Nixon can we hope to gain any understanding as to why he participated in the Watergate cover-up. American Experience – The Presidents Collection puts the information out there, allowing you to draw your own conclusions.
The parade of historical events which occupied each of these Presidents is also fascinating. During the terms of these Presidents, America took part in two World wars and numerous military operations; from Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders to the conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf. In that time, we also witness the rise and fall of Soviet communism and the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall. At home, there were enormous struggles for civil rights, human rights and economic equality.
The various producers, directors, and writers of these documentaries have utilized a countless number of old photographs, audio recordings, silent and sound motion picture footage, and television broadcasts and some of the footage is one-of-a-kind (watching Franklin Roosevelt walking with the help of his son, a nitroglycerin pill popping from LBJ’s mouth during a speech, to name just two examples).As I wrote before, A gallery of respected historians, relatives, and members of the various Presidents’ staffs are present to offer testimony and opinions on the various men and their years in the public eye. Often, they are as fascinating as the men they’re describing, and what some of them have to say has never before been documented. Many distinguished, award-winning actors and historians do the narrative commentaries on the discs; among them are Jason Robards, Linda Hunt, David Ogden Stiers, Stacy Keach, and David McCullough (Truman biographer).
The Presidents Collection provides a fascinating look at the United States through the eyes of some of the men who were chosen to lead the United States. This box set would be a welcome addition to any history buffs DVD collection.
The Presidents Collection appears in a variety of screen shapes though most are 1.33:1. The Woodrow Wilson set is a nonanamorphic 1.78:1 while the Jimmy Carter disc and the disc on George H. W. Bush are anamorphically enhanced 1.78:1 and look by far the best of the group. All of the discs, have occasional problems with moiré in some of the old photographs and film footage. Almost all of the modern interviews are sharp and detailed and feature very good color. Obviously, the quality of the rare film footage is spotty, but that’s no fault of the transfer.
Most of the discs offer a Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo track, while the George H.W. Bush disc uses a Dolby Digital 5.1 audio mix.
Only three of the disc sets in this collection contain bonus features.
• The Woodrow Wilson disc offers viewers the opportunity to watch the documentary in enhanced mode. The viewer is given the option to branch away from the presentation and view mini-featurettes of from one to two minutes on various topics being discussed at that point in the documentary proper. Such mini-documetaries on race relations, women’s suffrage, labor rights, and personalities of the period like William Howard Taft or Henry Cabot Lodge are offered.
• The Wilson set also offers a World War I poster art gallery in which the viewer clicks on a poster and a historian describes briefly the history of the art work in an adjoining window.
• A scholar’s forum in which ten different historians can be selected to talk for a minute or more about Wilson’s legacy.
• The Kennedy’s documentary offers a 6-minute featurette called JFK’s Hidden Life. This interview with historian Robert Dallek discusses Kennedy’s little known health problems including his Addison’s disease and other illnesses that required a slew of medications.
• George H. W. Bush has a 15 ½-minute featurette dealing with the 1988 Presidential campaign called “Going Negative.” It is a lengthier version of the sequence in the show itself dealing with Bush’s desire not to mudsling during the campaign against Michael Dukakis.
• A 2 ¼-minute sequence with a Bush parachute jump done when he was 83.
• A teacher’s guide is available as a downloadable DVD-ROM feature with the collection.
