TV Series/DVD Review: 'The West: A Film by Stephen Ives'

On September 15, 1996, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired The People, the first of eight episodes of director Stephen Ives' The West, a documentary about the United States' westward expansion and its effects on the history and culture of various peoples, including Americans, Native Americans, Spanish, French, Mexicans, and African Americans. Written by Geoffrey C. Ward and Dayton Duncan, The West was executive produced by Ken Burns and produced under the aegis of Burns' Florentine Films and Ives' own Insignia Films production company. The West was narrated by actor Peter Coyote, who would later provide narration for later documentaries by Ken Burns, including The National Parks: America's Best Idea, Prohibition, and The Vietnam War. 

Presented by Ken Burns and directed by Stephen Ives, this 12-hour film chronicles the epic saga of America's most vast and turbulent region, beginning before European settlement and continuing into the 20th Century. - Back cover blurb, Ken Burns Presents: The West: A Film by Stephen Ives DVD set

The West was originally conceived as one of a series of documentaries by Ken Burns (The Civil War, Jazz), but Burns was already committed to making Baseball. But because Burns wanted to see both projects come to fruition, he asked Ives (who had worked with Florentine Films in The Congress, The Civil War, and Baseball) to direct The West. Ives agreed. Working from a script written by Burns' frequent collaborator, historian Geoffrey C. Ward, and co-writer Dayton Duncan, Ives and his crew of producers, cinematographers, editors, voice actors, and composer Matthias Gohl spent the next five years making a nine-part epic that earned Ives the prestigious Erik Barnouw Award from the Organization of American Historians, plus a nomination for the TCA Award from the Writers' Guild of America for Outstanding Documentary - Other than Current Events. In addition, the series earned the General Motors Mark of Excellence Award from Ken Burns' longtime corporate sponsor, GM.

The West comes to life in this penetrating history that overturns old stereotypes, discovers new personalities, and explores the triumphs and tragedies that make The West the source of some of the most compelling stories in American history. Presented by Ken Burns and directed by Stephen Ives, this 12-hour film chronicles the epic saga of America's most vast and turbulent region, beginning before European settlement and continuing into the 20th Century. - Back cover blurb, Ken Burns Presents: The West: A Film by Stephen Ives DVD set

The West was broadcast over eight consecutive nights, beginning on September 15, 1996, and ending on September 22. It was presented on the then-prevalent fullscreen analog TV format, with stereo sound and closed captions.

And although Ives directed and headed the production staff, The West follows the visual and narrative format of the films of Ken Burns. The episodes consist of a mix of contemporary footage shot on location in undeveloped areas all over the Western United States, archival paintings, photos, and drawings presented in the now-familiar "Ken Burns effect, all done by long-time Burns cinematographers Buddy Squires and Allen Moore. Furthermore, the nine episodes are subdivided into chapters, another technique used in other documentaries made by Florentine Films.
The eight episodes of The West* are:

1. The People (to 1806)
2. Empire Upon the Trails (1806 to 1848)
3. Speck of the Future (1848 to 1856)
4. Death Runs Riot (1856 to 1868)
5. The Grandest Enterprise Under God (1868 to 1874) 
6. Fight No More Forever (1874 to 1877)
7. The Geography of Hope (1877 to 1887)
8. One Sky Above Us (1887 to 1914)

In addition to narrator Peter Coyote and a voice cast that includes Philip Bosco, Amy Madigan, Gary Sinise, Randolph Mantooth, Ben Lin, Matthew Broderick, Cherry Jones, Jason Robards, Ralph Waite, Mary Stuart Masterson, Pamela Reed, Arthur Miller, Blythe Danner, Jimmy Smits, Adam Arkin, and Keith Carradine, The West also features interviews with historians Stephen E. Ambrose, Richard White, and J.S. Holliday, novelists N. Scott Momaday and Maxine Hong Kingston, and political figures from the region, including Ann Richards, Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Ralph Yarborough, and Stewart Udall. 

 * When The West was released on home video in the late 1990s, "One Sky Above Us" was split into two parts: "Ghost Dance" and "One Sky Above Us." The VHS release (September 24, 1996) was the first home video release in which Episode Eight was bisected into two one-hour segments; the 2003 DVD release also presents The West as a nine-part series rather than as an eight-part one. 

My Take

When I was a college student in the late 1980s, I majored in journalism and minored in history. I have always had an affinity for historical subjects, and one of my pet peeves with the U.S. educational system is how a subject that has as much drama and larger-than-life personalities is often taught in such a way that it bores most young people to tears. As such, I've always felt like an oddball; I love history, particularly American history, but very few of my friends and acquaintances share this passion. 

And although my focus tends to be on American military history, especially when it concerns World War II and other conflicts of the modern era, I also have some interest in other historical periods, including the Civil War, which was a consequence of the westward expansion of the young nation and the split between the North and South over the expansion of slavery as America acquired large tracts of land on its march west to the Pacific coast. 

When I was a kid in school, I had a period in which I was fascinated by the topics of the Mexican War (one of our country's most shameful conflicts, in my opinion) and the Indian Wars. When I started reading about those two intertwined topics, my outlook was incredibly racist and naive (Well, the Indians were savages, and America needed to expand and grow). But as I read more and more, I found myself aghast at the way that Americans of European descent treated people from other ethnic groups/nationalities, and cultures. I still loved my country of birth and was proud to be an American citizen, but I was outraged by the history of slavery and the treatment of Native Americans. 

I fully intended to watch The West when it originally aired on PBS in the fall of 1996, but for reasons that I can't recall, I forgot all about it and missed the entire series. I ended up seeing it for the first time in November of 2016 when I bought the five-disc 2003 DVD set from Amazon.

I've seen quite a few of Ken Burns' documentaries, and even though this is "A Stephen Ives Film," The West has all of the characteristics of "A Ken Burns Film."  It has a well-written script by Geoffrey C. Ward and Danton Duncan, both of whom are respected historians and writers with their own body of work aside from their collaboration with Burns and Florentine Films. In The West, Ward and Duncan lay bare both the triumphs and tragedies of America's westward march. It gives voice to the Americans who ventured west of the Mississippi for any number of motives (financial, religious, political, or merely out of the need to explore and discover), as well as to the Native Americans, the Spanish, the Mexicans, the Chinese, and other peoples whose destinies were intertwined with the huge expanse of territory known collectively as "the West." 

From the arrival of the first Asians to cross the Bering Land Bridge centuries before the birth of Christ to the "taming of the Frontier" in the early 20th Century, The West gives viewers a fair and balanced look at what Americans called "Manifest Destiny," and explores every facet of the birth of America as a world power. It's a fascinating - if often sad and infuriating - mirror into the American psyche, as well as a demolisher of old myths and stereotypes that were created by dime novels and Hollywood "epics" such as "They Died With Their Boots On."

The DVD

I have The West: A Film by Stephen Ives as a five-disc DVD set produced and distributed by PBS Distribution. It is the 2013 re-issue edition and presents the documentary in its original full-screen format. For the most part, the DVD set faithfully replicates the series as it originally aired, although it splits Episode Eight, One Sky Above Us, into two one-hour episodes. In this version of the documentary, Episode Eight is The Ghost Dance, while Episode Nine is One Sky Above Us. 

Because this is the DVD edition (PBS Distribution has not issued a high-definition release on Blu-ray), the video is presented in standard definition and the Englsh language audio track is limited to the basic 2-channel stereo. That having been said, The West both looks and sounds good on a high-end HDTV set with a home theater sound system. According to the packaging labels, The West has closed captions for the hearing impaired; however, if you use a Blu-ray player with an HDMI cable, closed captions don't appear on-screen.