Civil War/War between the States.

[vicente solano]

Looking for good movies/novels set in the above period.
Come on, let´s have your answers...

 

[Maurice]

Try Gore Vidal's historical novel 'Lincoln'. It sparked my interest in the civil war years ago. His '1876' is also an excellent read.

Re movies set in the period, there's nothing like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

 

[frayne]

Pick up Ken Burn's documentary on the Civil War. It is excellent.

 

[Maurice]

I'd second that, but I think the OP is looking for works set during the war rather than works about the war.

 

[WhoDaresWins]

How about the obvious: "Gone with the Wind". Also, "Sommersby" (Jodie Foster/Richard Gere) which is set during Reconstruction, the period just after the Civil War.

 

[vicente solano]

Maurice is right. Looking fiction set on that period. But I appreciate any info.

 

[Trek]

See if you can find this on DVD:

North and South (TV miniseries) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Dawg52]

There's not any. We lose in all of them.

 

[WhoDaresWins]

Vincente, I Googled best Civil War era movies and came up with the following: Glory(excellent;I saw this and would recommend it); Gettysburg; Gone With the Wind; Red Badge of Courage; North and South(a tv mini-series); and Shenandoah(an old film with Jimmy Stewart). Getting back to "Sommersby". which I mentioned in a previous post, I found it quite a haunting mystery and a bittersweet romantic story with unusual twists and turns and much raw emotion.

 

[Ed_The_Gypsy]

By the way, some places it is known as The War of Northern Aggression.

 

[Maurice]

In other places its known as the War In Which Immoral Slaveholders Got Their Due.

 

[bssc]

There's not any. We lose in all of them.

Try the Timeline-191 series.

For movies, I would enjoyed Ted Turner's Gettysburg or The General. A third suggestion is The Red Badge of Courage, which was both a book and a movie.

 

[Zathras]

Glory was an excellent movie, I second the recommendation.
Harry Turtledove is an interesting author. He writes alternative histories. A couple of his are set in the time of the Civil War.
He is a historian, so many of the details and events of history as we know it still happen, but to either different people or ... well, it is fascinating.

 

[vicente solano]

Ed and Maurice, please don´t fight on my behalf

 

[Helios]

Watch "Ride with the Devil", different slant on the northern post war propaganda. The winners always write the history(badly).

 

[WhoDaresWins]

Watch "Ride with the Devil", different slant on the northern post war propaganda. The winners always write the history(badly).

I Googled this film and the plot jogged my memory and I recall seeing it. You are quite correct, it is well worth a viewing. I was surprised to see Jonathan Rhys Meyers(sp?) in the credits. I saw him most recently in the Showtime series "The Tudors" cast as Henry VIII and found him, for wont of a better word, "hot!"

 

[FIREd]

What about "Cold Mountain"...

Cold Mountain (2003)

 

[Gumby]

What about "Cold Mountain"...

Cold Mountain (2003)

Really fantastic music on the soundtrack.

 

[Maurice]

What about "Cold Mountain"...

Cold Mountain (2003)

Good recommendation - try the book too.

 

[Alan]

Lots of excellent recommendations here.

Vicente, you probably already know this but DVD's are produced with a "region setting" so be sure that when you buy anything that it includes your region.

Or that you own a region-free DVD player. (I have one as I buy TV series made in the UK that were never released in the USA but are readily available for purchase here in the USA).

 

[donheff]

Good recommendation - try the book too.

+1 - Yes, Cold Mountain is a good read. For some reason it reminded me of One hundred Years of Solitude, which is the only Gabriel Garcia Marquez book I liked -- but I liked it a lot.

 

[W2R]

The books that I read as a young girl growing up in the North, that shaped my initial ideas about the Civil War (or, as it was taught in school to Frank and other Southerners of my generation, The War of Northern Aggression), were Gone with the Wind, and to a lesser degree, Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Of course, as an inquisitive adult I have read more and my ideas about that war have evolved. But if you really want to know how many Americans perceive the Civil War, I would recommend those two books. They are fiction, and not factual, but they have shaped a lot of opinions.

I read the entire, unabridged version of Gone with the Wind out loud to my grandmother in March, 1962, as I took care of her while she recuperated from a broken arm. She was bored, and I didn't want to stop reading so I read the whole thing to her. We cried together in the sad parts.

 

[Maurice]

I read the entire, unabridged version of Gone with the Wind out loud to my grandmother in March, 1962, as I took care of her while she recuperated from a broken arm. She was bored, and I didn't want to stop reading so I read the whole thing to her. We cried together in the sad parts.

What a lovely memory.

 

[Orchidflower]

No kidding...what a great memory you have, W2R!

 

[W2R]

Yes, it is a lovely memory, isn't it? I remember that spring vacation with my grandmother quite fondly. She was a sweet woman and quite literate for her generation, with a college degree in the classics. But I never knew that she had such depth of feeling until I read Gone with the Wind to her.