Korean War In Color
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: B- Main Program: B
Why is
the Korean War forgotten? With the DVD Korean War In Color (2002), it is not
from a lack of full color footage. This
is the war often written off as a “police action” (whatever that means) when it
turns out to be a smaller-scale version of our hop3ed-for non-escalating way to
ballet Chinese Communism when terms were far more shut-off and the stakes were
much higher. Perhaps it is that thinking
of China, then the Soviet Union as Communist countries at once would expose the
myth that Communism was mono-centric, which fueled failure for the U.S. in
Vietnam. This DVD breaks down the events
in Korea as follows:
1)
Trouble On The Horizon
2)
Invasion
3)
Protecting Pusan
4)
Inchon
5)
The Road To Seoul
6)
The 38th Parallel
7)
The Chinese Surprise
8)
The Frozen Chosin
9)
South Bound
10) The Real M.A.S.H.
11) Shifting The Balance
12) The Iron Triangle
13) Pressure For Peace
14) The Air War
15) The War Winds Down
I was
pleasantly surprised how well rounded the nearly 90-minutes-long main program
was. It is to the point and never talks
down to its audience. The system of
Capitalism that made the United States a success and succeed Britain as the
most influential country in the world and this disturbed the alternate Communist
and Socialist societies and their elites.
It is also a reminder when the United Nations was a much smaller
organization consisting of the Western powers, though China was not part of the competing
Warsaw Pact, which was headed by the now-defunct USSR.
The color
footage is also interesting as, though it is faded and lacks definition here
and there, it opens up the events in a way that feels like more than just
Hollywood newsreel cameramen were coldly filming the events in black and white
so some narrator could talk at the audience and water-down the events. Some of the footage is even outright
graphic. In all this, the footage is
above average overall, and it could even be argued that some of the color
stocks used are rare and even experimental.
Of course, the stocks are not identified, but the diversity is
interesting beyond their assemblage here.
The sound
has been remixed for Dolby Digital 5.1 AC-3 sound, but that is only on the main
program and cannot disguise the age of the original audio that is presented
here. Still, it is better than mono or
simple stereo, so this is an asset for the DVD.
Extras include silent footage of Marilyn Monroe’s visit to the troops,
stills, a graphic sequence of south Koreans being shot by firing squad and then all shot in the head at point blank
range to make sure they were dead, biographies of Truman, Eisenhower and
MacArthur form newsreels, stills, a timeline, isolated footage from the
soldiers by name and a TV interview (with difficult audio) of Senator Joseph McCarthy
on a Longines Watches’ sponsored TV interview show. This is a terrific set of extras that really
back up the main program in a strong way.
The
upsurge of history programming and interest in it is still not a substitute for
what the school system is having problems teaching, but school and
documentaries are only as good as their content. Korean
War In Color is an exceptional volume of history on DVD everyone should
see. This and many other outstanding
history DVDs are available form Goldhil at their website: www.goldhil.com, where they are available
for on-line orders.
- Nicholas Sheffo
