"Prohibition" is a three-part, six-hour documentary film series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that tells the story of the rise, rule, and fall of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the entire era it encompassed. The story of prohibition's rise and fall is a compelling saga that goes far beyond the oft-told tales of gangsters, rum runners, flappers, and speakeasies, to reveal a complicated and divided nation in the throes of momentous transformation. The film raises vital questions that are as relevant today as they were 100 years ago -- about means and ends, individual rights and responsibilities, and the proper role of government.
This utterly relevant cautionary tale raises profound questions about the proper role of government and the limits of legislating morality.
When the country goes dry in 1920, after a century of debate, millions of law-abiding Americans become lawbreakers overnight. Here are the stories of the petty whiskey-jobbers, big-time bootleggers, and brutal gangsters; the flappers who danced the Charleston in New York speakeasies; and the families who stomped grapes in basements and made moonshine in backyards. But beyond the cocktails, this is a darker story about what happens when lobbyists divide the country with wedge issues; the contempt unleashed by smear campaigns; and the perils of unfunded mandates.
By the 1930s, the "Noble Experiment" has bitterly divided the nation into wets, drys, and hypocrites. In 1933, with the country in the throes of the Great Depression, Americans have finally had enough--and rally to repeal 18th Amendment and put an end to Prohibition.
Narrated by Peter Coyote ("The National Parks").
Includes voiceovers from Adam Arkin, Paul Giamatti, Tom Hanks, Jeremy Irons, John Lithgow, Oliver Platt and many others.
Original music by Wynton Marsalis.
Includes more than 90 minutes of bonus footage.
Episodes include
A Nation of Drunkards
A Nation of Scofflaws
A Nation of Hypocrites
This DVD also includes
Interviews
- Saloons
- The Notion that Man Is Perfectable
- It's Better to Know the Judge
- That's Just the Way Life Was
- Rebels of New York
- Somebody Got a Pineapple
- Kentucky
- Capone
- Roy Olmstead
- Tabloid Heroes
- You People Were Thirsty
- Gangs
- Bad Booze
- Lessons
Extra Scene Titles
- Owled, Edged, Jingled, Piffed...
- Kentucky Bourbon
- And I Caught Hell
- He Never Did Get Caught
- San Francisco Welcomes Visitors from Italy, 1921
- Hoover's Medicine Ball Cabinet
- An Object of Ridicule
- Ten Nights in a Bar Room