Customer Reviews

American Experience - Murder at Harvard

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Dreadful. This series of DVDs are by and large well done. I was quite interested in the subject matter, but in the first fifteen minutes, after listening to the narrator drone on about himself, he then 'rewinds' the tape - to show us how it 'could have' gone. I turned it off after I picked my jaw up off the floor! Dreadful. Could have done better, IMO.

So far I've been impressed by the PBS American Experience series and the way it covers significant events or personalities in the nation or regionally. However, this documentary is an embarrassment to the franchise.

The focus was more upon the narrator than the historical events. At one point, the makers rewind their own tape, a total sign of the lack of seriousness of the work. To top it off, this is full of snobby, Harvardesque accents that just grate on one's ears after a brief while.

The only reason why this event gets a DVD is because it happened at Harvard. So what? There was a murder of a Harvard professor about 10 years ago. Two Dartmouth professors were killed less than seven years ago. Yes, Ivy Leaguers are subject to American dangers too.

I watched the old version of Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" before this DVD. Some say that Capote invented the true crime literary genre. One really got to observe the senselessness of the crime, the distruct among the murderers, and the unfortunate synergistic effect they had upon each other. "Murder at Harvard" had NOTHING quite as revealing. It was an utter waste of time to watch. Unlike "Gangs of New York" where American history eventually catches up with the narrative, this DVD rarely talked about Northeastern life at the time. The tensions between the North and the South which would soon lead to the Civil War is not mentioned either.

This was an absolute disgrace of a work!