Brooklyn Bridge

It seems quite fitting that this Ken Burns documentary was narrated by the historian, David McCullough. That's because McCullough has written a book detailing exactly what you'll see in this PBS film--the building of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Speaking of Ken Burns, this film marks his first production. He directed and produced this film--a film that would lead to many amazing PBS documentaries, such as "The Civil War" and "Lewis & Clark".

And, in an interesting twist, the voice for Washington Roebling (the son of the man who designed the bridge and who actually built the bridge) is provided by Paul Roebling--who I assume is a descendant of Washington Roebling, though IMDb gives no information about Paul other than a few film credits.

The film is broken into two major parts. The first portion consists of the events leading up to construction of the bridge and work on the bridge itself. I agree with another poster who felt that the best part of the film was this portion. Then, once the bridge was completed, comes the final part where people wax poetical talking about the bridge and it's about the impact of the bridge on our culture. Much of this sounds like a lot of blather, actually--like heavy padding. I really wish that more time had been spent on the building of the bridge and the final portion eliminated or severely truncated. Sure, it's an impressive engineering feat for its day, but talking about it at such length just seemed unnecessary. I'd give the first portion a 9 and the final portion a 3. But, since the first portion is much longer, I think an overall score of 7 is merited.

By the way, late in the film it shows the New York City skyline and the narration talks about Roebling's death in 1926. Oddly, the clip was of the city over a decade later, as you can see the swastika-bedecked dirigible flying over the city--a rather sloppy mistake. I assumed it was the Hindenburg but it could have been the Graf Zeppelin after its Nazi insignia was added.

Also by the way, I watched this streaming from Netflix and the sound and action were out of sync--and watching people talking in the later portions of the film was kind of freaky! You may want to look for the DVD instead.