Cheap Civilisation: The Complete Series (DVD) (Michael Gill, Peter Montagnon) Price
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| CATEGORY: | DVD |
| DIRECTOR: | Michael Gill, Peter Montagnon |
| THEATRICAL RELEASE DATE: | 1969 |
| MANUFACTURER: | BBC Warner |
| MPAA RATING: | NR (Not Rated) |
| FEATURES: | Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC |
| TYPE: | Documentary, Movie, Television |
| MEDIA: | DVD |
| # OF MEDIA: | 4 |
| UPC: | 794051260628 |
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Customer Reviews of Civilisation: The Complete Series
A clasic look at Western Civilisation I loved the series when it was first shown on PBS. It is the view of an Upper Class "Brit", but his bias is the one that formed my education. Lord Kenneth Clark was a brillian art historian (see Wickapedia). <
>I have watched the series numerous times, and still love it. Clark's ideas continue to challenge my changing views. I have visited most of the sites, several times. The buildings are now cleaner than shown on the DVD, but their timeless beauty is unchanged. I would have gladly purchased the DVDs for a far higher price. <
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Brilliant - Not to be missed.
"Civilisation, A Personal View" by Kenneth Clark
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>Created in the 1960,s, this series continues to be a classic television series for those who want to be informed and entertained by a highly, knowledgeable and respected art historian, Kenneth Clark.
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> Mr. Clark does assume that he is talking to a viewer, who is educated, well-read, and has passionate interest in the history, issues, and flow of western civilization from the end of ancient Rome until the 1960's. As the subtitle, "A Personal View" and his commentary makes perfectly clear, he is presenting his knowledgeable view of the history of western civilization. Drawing upon his years of study and experience, his presentations are carefully crafted to have balance as well as clearly presenting his own personal analysis and conclusions as others. It is obvious that he is not in the entertainment business, but his manner is one of a learned host who is presenting an overview of western of civilization from the point of view of its art. The breath and depth of the subject matter is excellent and is highly recommended today as it was 30 years ago.
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> Finally, this excellent series is now available on DVD. On the technical side, the image quality DVD is in general very good but it is unfortunate that there are some scenes that do not have the quality that this series deserves.
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> (At bit of trivia - One of the supporting actors in a brief scene from Hamlet is none other than Patrick Stuart.)
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Misleading title
The program title should be "Italian visual art and its influence on surrounding nations."
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>Clark does make many one sentence statements on topics other than art but they are shallow and frequently wrong.
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>If you are interested in the history of western civilization, read How Shall We Then Live by Francis A. Schaeffer. This book is aimed at college students and is at a much higher intellectual level than this video. Even though there are some religious comments, the first 80% of the book is totally secular in its analysis of the history of culture. The religious comments are ethical types that Plato and other ancient philosophers would make.
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>The video was intended as entertainment for the general public in Britain forty years ago when it was common for adults to have less than 12 years of schooling. This is why it is so shallow.
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>About the same time there was a more intellectually oriented program "Ascent of Man" on BBC but this will probably not be released because of the severe dumbing down of the television audience in the last 40 years.
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>One demonstrable falsehood is the statement that a handful of monks in western Ireland saved the literature of the infinite past. This is totally false. For one there were not enough monks to copy the thousands of volumes involved. The literature of ancient Greece and Rome was preserved in the middle east. The copies of the Bible available today go back to within 100 years from the original writings.
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>The narration is shallow. Here is an example. Palestrina is considered the earliest great composer of classical music. His music is played in the background while visuals of architecture of his time are shown. The narration says nothing about Palestrina and the comments about the architecture are along the line of, "Look at the pretty buildings." In contrast to this, the Taggart police detective program, which makes no pretense to being cultured, had one episode that contained a few minutes of Palestrina's music and a few sentence description of it.
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>There are many strange things about this program. One example is the title of one of the hour episodes is "The Artist as a Hero" yet there is not one sentence describing a heroic act done by an artist. The closes thing is the narrator saying that he can imagine the statues of hansom young men could represent men who had done heroic acts. Yet he does not describe one of the heroic acts.
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>Another example is the narrator slowly caressing the prow of a boat and saying that it has carvings on it. We are not given a close, detailed look at the carvings or given any information about what they represent or why they were carved onto the boat.