New York
(PBS Home Video, 1999, VHS: $85)
Clocking in at a staggering 600 minutes, the PBS series New York leaps from public television to private retailers on December 14, when its sales numbers will no doubt swell like the shadow of the Empire State Building on a July afternoon. Overwhelmingly educational, yet highly entertaining, this 10-hour love song to the city that never sleeps plows into the core of the Big Apple to discover its seedy origins as a money-hungry Dutch colony and its arduous rise to a melting pot of world trade. Produced by Ric Burns (brother of Ken), this well-crafted series consists mostly as a barrage of insightful and nostalgic interviews from such noted New Yorkers as Martin Scorsese, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, former mayor Ed Koch, Gotham author Mike Wallace, and the always-hysterical Fran Lebowitz. Much more than a mild synthesis of period music, restored black-and-white photos, and comparisons of poverty and kingdom-building, New York resonates across generations, ethnic persuasions, and economic classes. Filmmaker Burns dutifully succeeds in an ambitious climb to the top of the city’s skyline with accounts of such pinnacle achievements as Frederick Law Olmsted’s Central Park, and yet still trudges unblinking into macabre, horrific subjects like the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, which killed 146 women, and ultimately led to stricter labor reform laws. Broken into five episodes blanketing the years 1609-1931, Burns’ film not only covers such monumental subjects as New York’s role in the American Revolution and its repercussions as the epicenter of the Crash, but it also humanizes these events, breaking them down into terms which bring into perspective their place in history for viewers born even decades after these incidents.
This article appears in December 10 • 1999.