Product Details

• Released on: 2004-02-24
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Import
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 60 minutes

From Amazon.com
Ken Burns's fourth short film gives us a clear taste for the style that he made famous with The Civil War and Baseball. The first half of this hour-long program examines the design and construction of the Statue of Liberty using drawings, photographs, and readings (Jeremy Irons gives voice to French sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, who designed the statue). As narrator David McCullough states, no one at the dedication ceremony mentioned immigration, but the statue became a towering symbol of America's open-door policy. The second half examines the meaning of the statue and of liberty itself. Comments by author James Baldwin, director Milos Forman, and politicians Barbara Jordan and Mario Cuomo reverberate, as does Paul Simon's song "American Tune," which bookends the picture. --Doug Thomas