Barbara Truesdell

People's Century, a series of twenty-six one hour videos, addresses the major themes and events that shaped the world in the twentieth century. With the approach of the millennium, we can expect to see many retrospectives of the past one hundred years, but this series will certainly rank as one of the most ambitious, well-mounted, and fascinating accounts of this turbulent century.

Co-produced by WGBH Boston and the BBC, People's Century was filmed around the world in its endeavor to present a global perspective on the major events of this century. The material collected for the series is a fascinating sampling of newsreel clips, propaganda films, industrial films, and commercial films, some of which have never before been seen on television. The film footage alone would make this an intriguing documentary series, but perhaps the single greatest contribution of this project to the historical record is the collected oral testimony of people who participated in the history documented here. The producers' commitment to presenting "the extraordinary events of the twentieth century through the eyes of the ordinary people who lived through them" has created an engaging combination of film footage and oral history bound together by informative, unpretentious scripts narrated by John Forsythe and Alfre Woodard.

The series aired thirteen episodes this past spring, and the second thirteen will air in the spring of 1999. Each episode has a focus year, a watershed for the subject under consideration, but also spans a period of years in addressing the origins and effects of the subject. For example, in "The Great Escape," the watershed year is 1927 when The Jazz Singer debuted as the first talking picture. But the episode goes on to examine the influence of movies on cultures that created and viewed them, from the first silent pictures at the turn of the century, to the post-war challenge to movies posed by television, to the present resurgence of "blockbusters."

People's Century begins with the episode "Age of Hope," ushering in the optimism of the new century, and proceeds roughly chronologically. Other episodes address the First World War; the failed attempts to prevent another war; the rise of Nazism and the Second World War; the Cold War; the atomic bomb and its aftereffects; and guerilla wars fought around the globe. Still others consider political transformations such as the Russian Revolution; the fall of colonialism in Africa and Asia; the struggle for equality of Black South Africans and African Americans; the Cultural Revolution in China; and the collapse of Soviet communism. Social and economic revolutions are addressed in episodes about the rise of mass industrialization and the struggle of workers to unionize; the Great Depression; the post-war boom; the rise of Asian economies; public health successes and challenges; the environmental movement; and the influence of television. The series concludes with "Fast Forward," which examines the development of the global economy and the widening economic and cultural rifts dividing communities at the end of this century.

Each installment of People's Century opens with a traveling shot over a model of a road, an image suggestive of the project's intention to show history as a shared journey. The road is overlaid with film clips of the century's events as the road itself transforms. It starts with gaslit cobblestones, then is crisscrossed with trolley tracks; broken pavement marks the century's wars; and each post-war restoration changes the road until it ends in a modern highway. Overall, the narrative "road" that the series traces is an engrossing examination of the political and social events that much of the world experienced in common. In undertaking such a journey, however, there are inevitably alternative pathways and sidetracks that are not explored.

In any individual episode, this can be a shortcoming. While the producers have worked assiduously to present varying points of view on a subject, the complexity of a topic and the time constraints of the episode can leave gaps in the historical narrative they have constructed. "On the Line," for example, traces the rise and effects of a consumer society fueled by mass production. The video gives a clear presentation on the influence of the assembly line as a catalyst for increased production, urbanization, immigration, and greater access to consumer goods. However, the narrator only mentions in passing that some people did not benefit from the increased access to consumer goods, and this fact is never pursued.

Whole regions of the world can be invisible in individual episodes. After watching the first two installments of the series on PBS, for example, one could come away with the impression that there was no history in South America during the early twentieth century!

In a shorter series with the goal of representing the century around the world, this might be an unforgivable omission, but the breadth of subjects covered by People's Century in its twenty-six episodes gives the producers time to spread their attention among all the continents. Overall, the series succeeds in meeting its challenging goal of representing the disparate cultures, groups, and ideologies active in twentieth-century social and political history. The global perspective can work to the advantage of the series as often as it can fall short, because it can provide perspectives that might not be familiar or expected by the audience. In the episode "Sporting Fever," for example, a fascinating section addresses the nationalistic fervor in Uruguay when that country faced its neighbor Argentina in the championship match of the first World Cup.

As overviews of the topics addressed by each episode, the People's Century videos are--as videos should be--visually engaging, with high production quality and skillful editing that weaves film and live interview into an almost seamless narrative flow. However, the producers might have identified the source of the film clips more consistently; occasionally it is difficult to tell what kind of footage is being shown.

The series as a whole provides "snapshots" of the major events of the century rather than a unified narrative or theme. One advantage of this approach is that any episode stands on its own as a documentary of its subject, which makes it useful in the classroom. To aid teachers, a succinct and useful teacher's guide is available, in which each video is treated as an individual unit. A chart provides quick reference to such topics as economics, media, migration, prejudice, or social change, providing an easy way for teachers to combine episodes in the classroom. Most of the units also include another chart that links them to other videos in the series.

Each unit in the guide suggests discussion points for the class before and after viewing the episode, as well as activities to follow up on the subject matter. In addition, each unit identifies a program segment and provides discussion questions and activities specific to that segment. The unit "Breadline," for example, which is the episode about the Great Depression, presents suggestions for a class discussion exploring the role of the federal government in and public reactions to the New Deal.

People's Century is a Western perspective on the history of the past one hundred years. It may be another one hundred years before the full effects of the history it depicts can be assessed. When it is, I hope historians will have access to this series as an excellent collection of primary data and an intriguing vision of how people viewed the events of the twentieth century. People's Century will be a valuable resource for scholars, teachers, and students of that history for a long time to come.

People's Century is a video series co-produced by WGBH Boston and the BBC. Videos may be purchased by calling 800-255-9424. Individual tapes are $19.95. For a free copy of the teacher's guide, write to People's Century Teacher's Guide, Educational Print and Outreach, WGBH, 125 Western Avenue, Boston, MA 02134; (617) 787-4733 (fax); WGBH_materials_request@wgbh.org (e-mail).

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Barbara Truesdell, Ph.D. is the research specialist of the Oral History Research Center at Indiana University in Bloomington. She recently presented a paper on her work with Indiana's county historical societies at the spring conference of the Indiana Historical Society, as well as presenting a paper on the institutional barriers and bridges in oral history interviewing at the 1998 Oral History Association meeting.