Product Details

• Actors: David Cobham, Orson Welles, Ian Hogg
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: G (General Audience)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Vci Video
• VHS Release Date: June 25, 2002
• Run Time: 20 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6301302907
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #174,330 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Jack London Would Approve!, December 9, 2000

By 

Sharon Anderson (Millbury, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: To Build a Fire [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This "To Build a Fire" video can stand up to the short story. In its genre, it is just as effective. Of course, it helps to have the narration of Orson Wells! There are times when the accordian-music background can be distracting, but then again, I suppose it connotes the era of gold-prospecting in the Yukon. I am a high school English teacher who has shown this video for years as a companion piece after reading the classic tale by London, and just the other day, one of my sharp-eyed students exclaimed that he had noticed a man in the background just as the main character stumbles to his death at the video's end. Sure enough! We re-wound the video and discovered a definite technical flaw! A "Three Men and a Baby" ghost! View it yourself and see!

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Nature 1, Man 0, July 22, 2005

By 

Steven Hellerstedt "SH" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: To Build a Fire (DVD)

A man and his dog are walking along Henderson Creek in the high Yukon country. It is winter, and winter in the Yukon can be unforgiving to a chechaquo, a newcomer to the land. It's the man's first winter and he is walking on a day he should not. The dog knows this, but the man is a newcomer. The temperature is colder than sixty-five degrees below zero. Jack London's `To Build a Fire' is a classic tale of man against nature, London's harsh Yukon nature that was ruled by the law of club and fang. First published as a juvenile story in the magazine Youth's Companion in 1902, it was changed a bit for an adult audience and published in its final form in the Century Magazine in 1908. A little later it was anthologized in a slim volume of London short stories entitled `Lost Face' in 1910.

TO BUILD A FIRE is a 56-minute episode from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's 1981 mini-series `Jack London's Tales of the Klondike.' Directed by David Cobham, narrated by Orson Welles and starring Ian Hogg as the man, it is a faithful adaptation. Which, in this case, is a mixed blessing. London wrote from inside his characters, and what happened - the action - almost always shared equal billing with the character's reaction to that action. I mean, his masterpiece, The Call of the Wild, is written from a dog's point-of-view! The challenge presented by works like Call of the Wild and To Build a Fire is to bring that inner voice to the surface. This program met the challenge, with middling success, by having Welles read pertinent sentences from the story over the action.

Remove the narration and you have an hour's worth of a man walking across the snow. It doesn't look as cold as I've pictured it, although whoever did the make-up frosted up the man's beard right nicely. The man and dog get along too well, too. London's Man ruled by the club, his Dog challenged that rule with the fang, and neither party ever seemed particularly fond of the other. There are scenes in TO BUILD A FIRE where the dog seems downright frisky and playful. Nowhere in the program is this observation from London's story on display - "On the other hand, there was no keen intimacy between the dog and the man. The one was the toil-slave of the other, and the only caresses it had ever received were the caresses of the whip-lash and of harsh and menacing throat-sounds that threatened the whip-lash. " I never thought I'd ever have occasion to offer this observation, but I think the husky Pepper was miscast. This program needed a surly dog, and they got a Disney-cute one instead. I haltingly recommend TO BUILD A FIRE. It could have been much worse. Do not under any circumstance, though, watch this before reading the story. London's story in its entirety is readily available on the internet, and your first exposure to a story usually sets it in your mind. If you watch this before reading the original you're likely to wonder what all the fuss is about.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars straightforward adaptation, April 3, 2003

By 

Brian (TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: To Build a Fire [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This is a well done adaptation of Jack London's story. It's also very straightforward so that you might not find much value in watching it after reading the story. It really doesn't enhance the experience of reading the story, but you might check it out anyway, especially for the narration of Orson Welles.