Product Details

• Actors: Martin Luther King
• Format: Black & White, Color, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Mpi Home Video
• VHS Release Date: August 31, 1994
• Run Time: 60 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6301038851
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #26,377 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

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  Video > African American Cinema > African American Heritage > Leaders

• This item is part of The Speeches Collection Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

74 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars it is the best of tapes, it is the worst of tapes, March 7, 2000

By	John Barnes (Denver, CO USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Contrary to what a previous reviewer wrote, "I Have a Dream" has had three sections chopped out of it; it's still a good version of an important speech. The audio here is often excellent -- good selections from the December '62 speech to the SCLC, a good cutting from "I Have been to the Mountain", a good (but too brief) quote from one of the anti-Vietnam speeches. One long section from just before the third Selma march (the one that succeeded) is also very fine. Well worth the money for those with an interest in public speaking and rhetoric. As sort of a bonus, you also get Bobby Kennedy's impromptu eulogy (though the space might have been better used for more of King).

Editing, however, veers all over; there are four "assembled" speeches (ones that were never given, assembled from pieces of other speeches). All of the Birmingham material is fragmented and out of order.

Further, the nostalgia footage, while giving aging boomers an excuse for a good cry, is so extensive that we only actually see King for about 1/3 of the tape -- the rest of the time you get the tiresome video editorializing for which the Speeches Collection is infamous. You don't learn nearly as much as you should about his delivery, and practically all footage of audience reaction is missing, so if you want to study King as a speaker, in detail, this tape will be very frustrating. (Is Joan Baez on a march really more interesting than MLK?)

Finally, two areas of King's career are stinted: his antiVietnam activity (we get only his short defense of his doing it -- none of his actual critiques of the war), and his preaching. To really represent him and his style, at least a few minutes of a sermon -- especially of one of his evangelical ones -- should have been included.

So three stars: there's material here that belongs in any good collection of public speaking, but there's also a lot of "Speeches Of" video hash and emotional pandering. If you use it to teach speech or rhetoric, now and then you will need to teach against the tape.

51 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars good summary of civil rights era in addition to speeches, August 10, 1999

By A Customer

I use this video in my Language and Culture class. It not only contains the full text of many of King's important speeches, including "I Have a Dream," but also contains original footage of many important events of the Civil Rights Movement. It is excellent for both history and rhetorical analysis. Most students are moved by the film and come away with new respect. Highly recommended.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant,, December 27, 2004

By	Henry Cooper "The One and Only" (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews

I first watched this on video when I was 8, 10 or some years old which I checked out @ the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library in Roswell. I think it once changed me how the way I feel about life and in the future. MLK has always been an inspiration to me how the way I'm livin' and how I'm playin the horn which is the trumpet. I praised God that he would've been 2day to see what it is. May God bless his soul.

And check out the movie "King" from the late Paul Winfield (1941-2004) R.I.P.