Movie Review

In 1899, no one in America was worrying about an impending Y1.9K problem. Indeed, if the narration of this PBS film, part of the American Experience series, is to be believed, Americans were not worrying about much of anything at the turn of the previous century. The narrator and series host David McCullough sets the tone for the film by announcing at the outset that "progress was something you believed in because it was all around you, plain as day" and that "cynicism and self-pity were not in style." Nineteen hundred, in his summary, "was an exceptionally crowded year, filled with stirring events and tragedy, through which, for all the twists and turns, the current of American optimism ran powerfully."	1
That current also runs powerfully through this film, which narrates in a roughly chronological fashion the key events of 1900. Three hours (and a year's worth of events) later, McCullough concludes that "there was good reason for hope and confidence . . . the possibilities in America seemed greater than they'd ever been." Even after President William McKinley is assassinated in the film's 1901 coda, the filmmakers insist on ending on an upbeat note.	2
To be sure, the script by Judy Crichton and David Grubin veers at crucial points away from this relentless portrait of turn-of-the-century Americans as buoyant and cheerful and indicates why at least some might have had reasons for anger, fear, or even pessimism. We learn about the Scofield Mine disaster, the worst in the nation's history, which left more than two hundred miners dead, including the five Luoma brothers, Finnish immigrants whose parents had just joined them three months earlier in the new land, and about the futile quest of Rep. George White of North Carolina (the last of what had once been twenty-two black congressmen) to pass an antilynching bill. Ten minutes is devoted to the strike of ninety thousand anthracite coal miners who toiled in horrible conditions for low wages.	. . .