Gettysburg (1993)

 

 

Gettysburg is a war epic, originally intended to be a mini-series, filmed partially on the Gettysburg National Military Park. It focuses on Union and Confederate leaders’ experiences, decisions, and mistakes throughout the three days of the battle. The film dramatizes the personalities of well-known historical figures.

With a large budget and advanced technology, filmmakers were able to portray the brutality and intimacy of battle. Some historians were less impressed by the lack of consideration of the causes of the war and the relative absence of slavery from the script.

The film was well loved by critics and fans of historical epics; many commended its attention to detail.

 

FURTHER READING

Books

Jim Weeks, Gettysburg: Memory, Market and an American Shrine (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).

Thomas Desjardin, These Honored Dead: How the Story of Gettysburg Shaped American Memory (Cambridge: De Capo Press Incorporated, 2008).

Stephen Sears, Gettysburg (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004).

Michael Shaara, Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War (New York: Random House Publishing Group, 2010).

Articles

James P. Weeks, “A Different View of Gettysburg: Play, Memory, and Race at the Civil War’s Greatest Shrine,” Civil War History 50, no. 2 (2004) 175-191.

Jack Gordon, “Leadership Lessons from Gettysburg,” Training 42, no. 10 (Oct 2005).

Film Reviews

Roger Ebert, “Gettysburg Movie Review,” Roger Ebert, October 8, 1993.

Richard Corliss, “Gettysburg: The Great Battle That the Movies Ignored,” Time, July 3, 2013.

Stephen Holden, “Review/Film; When War Was All Glory and Bands and Death,” New York Times, October 8, 1993.

 

 

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