Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (American Experience/WGBH Boston Video)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C+     Extras: C-     Episode: B

 

 

If you are naïve enough to think the environment is immortal just because some moneyed interests want to brainwash you into thinking only “Communists” are for it because they “hate property rights” or something like that, then you need to wake up.  One woman who knew better was Rachel Carson and as the DDT craze of the 1950s increasingly turned out to have a dark side, she eventually wrote a book that likely saved the world and helped create the environmental movement we have today.

 

WGBH Boston Video has issued this fine American Experience installment on her book Silent Spring (published 1962, this show is from 1993) is a solid hour everyone should see.  The title refers to the arrival of the new season quiet because the animals (especially birds) are all dead!

 

It shows how she slowly lands up writing the book along with the efforts by the chemical industry and government to stop her.  From industrial films, to communists using insects to destroy the U.S., to attacking her character to lying about who was being poisoned or killed as long as they made money (like the ever-questionable Monsanto, whose detractors nickname them Mon-Satan), their ugly attacks backfired when it made her book a huge hit.

 

It is an amazing story and under an hour may not do it enough justice.  Be sure to catch this DVD and the book, which is more relevant than ever.

 

The 1.33 X 1 image is soft as expected for an older analog NTSC professional production, though a digital backup used here might be the reason for some of the harshness.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is decent including Meryl Streep reading Carson’s words, but we get no extras again except DVD-ROM printable educational material.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo