Documentary Review: 'Prohibition: A Film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick'
After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited. – Section One, Amendment 18 to the Constitution of the United States
On October 3, 2011, the 300 or so member stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired A Nation of Drunkards, the first of three parts of Prohibition: A Film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick. Written by Burns' long-time collaborator Geoffrey C. Ward and produced by Sarah Botstein, Lynn Novick, and Ken Burns, the series explored one of the most controversial - and least effective - experiments in social re-engineering in American history.
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. Fanatics will never learn that, though it be written in letters of gold across the sky. It is the prohibition that makes anything precious. - Mark Twain
The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution – also known as the Volstead Act, named after Rep. Andrew Volstead (R-Minn), who introduced the bill as the National Prohibition Act in 1917 – is a shining example of how legislation crafted with the best of intentions can have unintended negative consequences and create more problems than it solves.
Its staunchest supporters – the “drys” – hailed it as the Noble Experiment and an outstanding achievement for progressive forces that, if it worked as intended, would solve all the social ills caused by the consumption of alcohol. Ban booze from America, the drys proclaimed, and such problems as domestic violence, spousal abuse, absenteeism from work, poverty and petty crime would be eradicated, leaving a "more perfect union."
From the mid-19th Century to the entry of the United States into the First World War, the temperance movement - an alliance of religious leaders, women and citizens of rural communities (most of them in the Midwest and South) pitted itself against big city dwellers, immigrants and the alcoholic beverage industry – the nation’s fifth largest job creating enterprise and the biggest source of revenue for the Federal government – and endeavored to eliminate saloons, breweries and distilleries from America.
The eighty-year-long War on Booze was, as filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick point out in their three part documentary Prohibition, a protracted and ultimately futile attempt by a mostly white and Protestant coalition of preachers, women activists, lawyers and anti-immigrant groups to legislate morality in the name of a more pure – socially, religiously and racially speaking –America.
Its crowning achievement, of course, was the Volstead Act of 1917, which was introduced in Congress by a conservative congressman from Minnesota at a time when anti-German sentiment was at a fever pitch and public opinion favored quick passage of a bill intended to “punish” supposedly untrustworthy German-American owners of such breweries as Anheuser-Busch, Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company and other such companies based in the Midwest.
Indeed, A Nation of Drunkards, the first of Prohibition’s three parts, points out that had it not been for the clever manipulation by the Anti-Saloon League’s Wayne Wheeler of wartime hatred for all things German, passage of the Volstead Act would have taken longer and it might have even died without ever becoming part of the Constitution. (It was, in fact, vetoed by President Woodrow Wilson, but it had enough supporters in the House of Representatives and the veto was overturned. The 18th Amendment became the law of the land after it was ratified in 1919 when Nebraska became the 36th state to ratify it.)
How did a nation founded on rights ever go so wrong? – tagline for Prohibition
However, as the episodes A Nation of Scofflaws and A Nation of Hypocrites remind us, the only amendment to the Constitution designed to restrict personal freedoms and impose morality on an entire nation failed miserably. (It's also, incidentally, the only amendment to have been repealed.)
We who live in the 21st Century know, of course, how miserably things worked out for the dry movement and the entire nation. Prohibition did, at first, have some positive results because most Americans knew that alcohol abuse was a social problem that needed to be addressed. Many individuals, even those who were drinkers, tried to obey the law as a matter of good citizenship. As a result, alcohol-related car accidents were reduced and public drunkenness arrests went down sharply within the first 12 months of the Prohibition era.
However, the law had many loopholes and was not enforced seriously or even fairly. The manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages was forbidden, yet the consumption of it was not even mentioned in the Volstead Act. Some states which had ratified it – including Michigan - did nothing to enforce it and even repealed prohibition laws within their own constitutions, and the Federal government only fielded a handful of Prohibition agents to shut down illegal distilleries and speakeasies, arrest bootleggers and prosecute gangsters who built huge criminal empires made possible by America’s unquenchable thirst for forbidden beverages – beer, whiskey, gin and wine, for the most part.
My Take: In the tradition of other documentaries directed and produced by Ken Burns, Prohibition gives viewers both a Big Picture look at a period of American history and a more intimate and personal view at some of the individuals – both Dry and Wet – who were involved with (or affected by) the temperance movement and its ill-fated campaign to ban booze from America forever.
For A Nation of Drunkards, which covers the period between 1826 and 1919, and the other two parts, Burns and his collaborator Lynn Novick rely on the by-now familiar techniques of mixing dramatic use of cinematographer Buddy Squires’ lenswork on still pictures, archival documentary footage and “talking head” interviews with writers, historians and ordinary people who were young when Prohibition was part of the American scene.
In addition, Prohibition makes use of excellent voice acting by a cast of well-known actors, including Peter Coyote (the series’ narrator), Tom Hanks, Paul Giamatti, Patricia Clarkson, Philip Bosco, Kevin Conway, Blythe Danner, Samuel L. Jackson and Jeremy Irons. Some, like Giamatti, portray one of the series’ featured historical figures, while others lend their vocal talent to multiple parts.
The script by Geoffrey C. Ward, based mostly on author Daniel Okrent’s Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, probably isn’t flawless and might have factual errors sprinkled here and there (as history buffs and critical viewers of The War and The Civil War have previously noted) but overall Prohibition is a fascinating look at a pivotal period of American history.
It shows, in an entertaining and non-didactic style, how the Prohibition laws not only failed to eradicate alcohol from its long-established presence in America, but also instilled in many otherwise law-abiding citizens a sense of disdain for legal authority and – worse – helped the growth of organized crime and the incidental rise in crime, corruption and moral hypocrisy.
Although the digitally-mastered video and sound – especially on Blu-ray - are top-notch and the musical selections by Florentine Films’ music editors are lively and evocative of the period, Paramount Home Entertainment and PBS Distribution should have taken some time to quality check the subtitles on the Blu-ray and DVD editions of Prohibition.
I am not familiar with the process of adding subtitles – in any language – to video images, but I suspect that it is a time-consuming and boring task that, if not carefully carried out, can allow all kinds of mistakes to creep in and show up on people’s TVs.
Sometimes – and this is understandable – subtitles have to condense what a speaker is saying in the audio track in order to keep up with the film’s pacing. Thus, truncating a line of overlong dialogue so that the subtitle doesn’t lag too much is okay. It happens in lots of films and most people – especially the deaf and hard of hearing – won’t notice.
What is not understandable – unless Prohibition was rushed to home video so it would be available shortly after its initial air dates on PBS in October of 2011 – is the sloppiness of some of the subtitles present in the Blu-ray, especially those that appear when street addresses are mentioned in the narrative. (At least on three occasions while watching A Nation of Hypocrites, I noticed glaring errors in capitalization when specific locations are named.)
All in all, however, Prohibition is still a remarkable example of documentary filmmaking at its best. It presents a complex topic rife with legal, moral and social conflict with wit, style, a fast pace, a fine eye for detail and a keen understanding of the extremes of human emotion on both sides of the issue. Ken Burns and his Florentine Films crew infuse Prohibition's three episodes with a plethora of historical anecdotes and a cavalcade of characters –including the hatchet-wielding anti-saloon crusader Carrie Nation, lawyer-turned-bootlegger George Remus, satirist-writer H.L. Mencken and gangster-chief Al Capone – who personify the various factions in the struggle between “Wet” and “Dry”America
Its staunchest supporters – the “drys” – hailed it as the Noble Experiment and an outstanding achievement for progressive forces that, if it worked as intended, would solve all the social ills caused by the consumption of alcohol. Ban booze from America, the drys proclaimed, and such problems as domestic violence, spousal abuse, absenteeism from work, poverty and petty crime would be eradicated, leaving a "more perfect union."
From the mid-19th Century to the entry of the United States into the First World War, the temperance movement - an alliance of religious leaders, women and citizens of rural communities (most of them in the Midwest and South) pitted itself against big city dwellers, immigrants and the alcoholic beverage industry – the nation’s fifth largest job creating enterprise and the biggest source of revenue for the Federal government – and endeavored to eliminate saloons, breweries and distilleries from America.
The eighty-year-long War on Booze was, as filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick point out in their three part documentary Prohibition, a protracted and ultimately futile attempt by a mostly white and Protestant coalition of preachers, women activists, lawyers and anti-immigrant groups to legislate morality in the name of a more pure – socially, religiously and racially speaking –America.
Its crowning achievement, of course, was the Volstead Act of 1917, which was introduced in Congress by a conservative congressman from Minnesota at a time when anti-German sentiment was at a fever pitch and public opinion favored quick passage of a bill intended to “punish” supposedly untrustworthy German-American owners of such breweries as Anheuser-Busch, Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company and other such companies based in the Midwest.
Indeed, A Nation of Drunkards, the first of Prohibition’s three parts, points out that had it not been for the clever manipulation by the Anti-Saloon League’s Wayne Wheeler of wartime hatred for all things German, passage of the Volstead Act would have taken longer and it might have even died without ever becoming part of the Constitution. (It was, in fact, vetoed by President Woodrow Wilson, but it had enough supporters in the House of Representatives and the veto was overturned. The 18th Amendment became the law of the land after it was ratified in 1919 when Nebraska became the 36th state to ratify it.)
How did a nation founded on rights ever go so wrong? – tagline for Prohibition
However, as the episodes A Nation of Scofflaws and A Nation of Hypocrites remind us, the only amendment to the Constitution designed to restrict personal freedoms and impose morality on an entire nation failed miserably. (It's also, incidentally, the only amendment to have been repealed.)
We who live in the 21st Century know, of course, how miserably things worked out for the dry movement and the entire nation. Prohibition did, at first, have some positive results because most Americans knew that alcohol abuse was a social problem that needed to be addressed. Many individuals, even those who were drinkers, tried to obey the law as a matter of good citizenship. As a result, alcohol-related car accidents were reduced and public drunkenness arrests went down sharply within the first 12 months of the Prohibition era.
However, the law had many loopholes and was not enforced seriously or even fairly. The manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages was forbidden, yet the consumption of it was not even mentioned in the Volstead Act. Some states which had ratified it – including Michigan - did nothing to enforce it and even repealed prohibition laws within their own constitutions, and the Federal government only fielded a handful of Prohibition agents to shut down illegal distilleries and speakeasies, arrest bootleggers and prosecute gangsters who built huge criminal empires made possible by America’s unquenchable thirst for forbidden beverages – beer, whiskey, gin and wine, for the most part.
My Take: In the tradition of other documentaries directed and produced by Ken Burns, Prohibition gives viewers both a Big Picture look at a period of American history and a more intimate and personal view at some of the individuals – both Dry and Wet – who were involved with (or affected by) the temperance movement and its ill-fated campaign to ban booze from America forever.
For A Nation of Drunkards, which covers the period between 1826 and 1919, and the other two parts, Burns and his collaborator Lynn Novick rely on the by-now familiar techniques of mixing dramatic use of cinematographer Buddy Squires’ lenswork on still pictures, archival documentary footage and “talking head” interviews with writers, historians and ordinary people who were young when Prohibition was part of the American scene.
In addition, Prohibition makes use of excellent voice acting by a cast of well-known actors, including Peter Coyote (the series’ narrator), Tom Hanks, Paul Giamatti, Patricia Clarkson, Philip Bosco, Kevin Conway, Blythe Danner, Samuel L. Jackson and Jeremy Irons. Some, like Giamatti, portray one of the series’ featured historical figures, while others lend their vocal talent to multiple parts.
The script by Geoffrey C. Ward, based mostly on author Daniel Okrent’s Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, probably isn’t flawless and might have factual errors sprinkled here and there (as history buffs and critical viewers of The War and The Civil War have previously noted) but overall Prohibition is a fascinating look at a pivotal period of American history.
It shows, in an entertaining and non-didactic style, how the Prohibition laws not only failed to eradicate alcohol from its long-established presence in America, but also instilled in many otherwise law-abiding citizens a sense of disdain for legal authority and – worse – helped the growth of organized crime and the incidental rise in crime, corruption and moral hypocrisy.
Although the digitally-mastered video and sound – especially on Blu-ray - are top-notch and the musical selections by Florentine Films’ music editors are lively and evocative of the period, Paramount Home Entertainment and PBS Distribution should have taken some time to quality check the subtitles on the Blu-ray and DVD editions of Prohibition.
I am not familiar with the process of adding subtitles – in any language – to video images, but I suspect that it is a time-consuming and boring task that, if not carefully carried out, can allow all kinds of mistakes to creep in and show up on people’s TVs.
Sometimes – and this is understandable – subtitles have to condense what a speaker is saying in the audio track in order to keep up with the film’s pacing. Thus, truncating a line of overlong dialogue so that the subtitle doesn’t lag too much is okay. It happens in lots of films and most people – especially the deaf and hard of hearing – won’t notice.
What is not understandable – unless Prohibition was rushed to home video so it would be available shortly after its initial air dates on PBS in October of 2011 – is the sloppiness of some of the subtitles present in the Blu-ray, especially those that appear when street addresses are mentioned in the narrative. (At least on three occasions while watching A Nation of Hypocrites, I noticed glaring errors in capitalization when specific locations are named.)
All in all, however, Prohibition is still a remarkable example of documentary filmmaking at its best. It presents a complex topic rife with legal, moral and social conflict with wit, style, a fast pace, a fine eye for detail and a keen understanding of the extremes of human emotion on both sides of the issue. Ken Burns and his Florentine Films crew infuse Prohibition's three episodes with a plethora of historical anecdotes and a cavalcade of characters –including the hatchet-wielding anti-saloon crusader Carrie Nation, lawyer-turned-bootlegger George Remus, satirist-writer H.L. Mencken and gangster-chief Al Capone – who personify the various factions in the struggle between “Wet” and “Dry”America
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