Johnstown Flood narrated by Richard Dreyfuss

Rating:
Summary: Revels in gore
Review: This documentary feels like it was made by an undegrad film student. Some of the recreations of the flood on what is obviously a limited budget are a noble effort. The panning and scanning over pictures is ok, but doing the same with drawings gets a little tedious and is distracting. The film misses a crucial element of the story: the culpiblility of the wealthy patrons of the hunting club that built the dam and failed to maintain it properly. Actors (acting students from a local college?) look too young for their roles and are overly dramatic. I grew up in Western Pennsylvania, went to school for a while in Johnstown. I have yet to see any actor capture the mood and tone of people of Western PA... and I wish someone would.

What bothered me most were the repeated details about the gore of the incident. The documentary takes pleasure and spends far too much time describing the carnage. For example, it devotes about 10 minutes recounting a story, most likely fictional, about a guy who gets caught robbing corpses.

Read the David McCullough book.

Rating:
Summary: Johnstown Flood offers engaging glimpse into history
Review: This film successfully handles the enormous historical scope of the Johnstown flood while exquisitely capturing the humanity of the disaster, which is so often obscured by dry facts and figures in many historical documentaries. Bussler treats viewers to a straight-forward, easy-to-follow description of the causes of the flood and its effects on those in its path. However, the abundance of personal narrative, which is taken from primary sources, allows viewers glimpses into the experiences of the people who were there. Re-enactments portraying these individual experiences add color and texture to the history, keeping viewers engaged throughout the film. Richard Dreyfuss as narrator as well as the film's rich sound make a compelling documentary. The film is accurate enough for history buffs while accessible (and entertaining enough) for school-age history students.

Rating:
Summary: Johnstown Flood
Review: This rendition of the tragedy of the Johnstown Flood in 1889 cannot be favorably compared with the first offering from The American Experience on PBS. The 2003 Dreyfuss-narrated version does not use the quantity of archival material available; it barely hints at the social and political pressures, especially by members of the social club situated at the top of the dam, which contributed to the breaking of the dam and the tragedy that followed. Richard Dreyfuss is overly dramatic, seeming to revel in the details of the tragedy in his delivery, and is not at all equal to the terrific David McCullough as a narrator. The use of real actors to repeat quotes from survivors and act out portions of the aftermath is just ludicrous, and none of them show any talent for this portrayal at all. It was very distracting to have these people plopped into the narrative willy-nilly. I was extremely disappointed in the 2003 DVD, and cannot recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Johnstown Flood
Review: This rendition of the tragedy of the Johnstown Flood in 1889 cannot be favorably compared with the first offering from The American Experience on PBS. The 2003 Dreyfuss-narrated version does not use the quantity of archival material available; it barely hints at the social and political pressures, especially by members of the social club situated at the top of the dam, which contributed to the breaking of the dam and the tragedy that followed. Richard Dreyfuss is overly dramatic, seeming to revel in the details of the tragedy in his delivery, and is not at all equal to the terrific David McCullough as a narrator. The use of real actors to repeat quotes from survivors and act out portions of the aftermath is just ludicrous, and none of them show any talent for this portrayal at all. It was very distracting to have these people plopped into the narrative willy-nilly. I was extremely disappointed in the 2003 DVD, and cannot recommend it.