The Untold History Of The United States Review

• 18th Jul 2013

Pinko, Commie. Red. These are all tags that would have been assigned to film director Oliver Stone back in the 1950s. Stone, the director of such films dealing with American modern history and politics include Born on the 4^th July (1989), JFK (1993), Nixon (1995) and W (2008) about the life and career of George W. Bush. When drawing on making another film about modern American history from a perspective that may not have been seen or even realized by many Americans he decided instead to make a documentary tracing the making of the America we know today and the one that exists in the minds of those not from America. Stone takes a different starting point to the norm which could have been the mass manufacturing of the Model-T Ford and the mass production of the automobile or the Wall Street Crash but here he commences with something that did not directly affect the USA, initially at any rate, namely the start of WWII in September 1939. And this becomes the theme of the documentary: how what America does effects the rest of the world and how America becomes the global player at the centre of world events. Before Pearl Harbor on 7th September 1941 it was mostly an isolationist view coming out of the USA including a pole by Americans that 10% believed that it was Britain looking for world domination rather than Nazi Germany, much to the frustration of President Roosevelt until the most powerful country in the world was to join in with a comfortable alliance with Britain against the Axis of Germany, Japan and Italy but an uneasy alliance with the Soviet Union which led to the long running Cold War; later becoming the main focus for  America on the international stage. It was after the war when America became all powerful with the Cold War, the development of the bomb, the bellicose presidencies of the next 40 years and its doomed attempts to stop the spread of communism in Eastern Europe, Korea, South America and Vietnam.

There are some characters which may be new names to many non-Americans such as Henry Wallace. Wallace was a leader in waiting following the death of Roosevelt in 1945 but was beaten to the leadership by Harry S. Truman. This was to set in motion the problems of paranoid America and the dangerous power the USA held in the Cold War against Wallace’s more measured views and, dare it be said socialist views and stand point. As would be expected from the distinguished American director the use of film footage is used very effectively and edited in with some fast moving documentary footage which is brilliantly done and keeps the pace momentous. There are no head to head interviews or archived interviews relying solely on footage with some strong effect. The narrator is Oliver Stone himself, but the main problem is not so much what Stone says, even if much of it is from a subjective neo-Socialist view point but rather his dour delivery which seems to lack any passion. Added to that is an at times very invasive music soundtrack. Never the less the more into the documentary the viewer is drawn the more fascinating as a box set viewing these documentaries back to back becomes, even if much of the footage covers familiar territory much of it is rarely seen and does not hold back on some of the more disturbing material.

This is not really a new history nor is it a secret history of the USA, not for those outside the USA at any rate but instead with the exception of those ‘heroes’ of post-war America such as Wallace; anyone visiting America comes back hungry for news, desiring to understand the root causes and analysis of international events be it the Middle East, the war on terror or even US politics. Americans get a sanitized view of the world via CNN, CBS NBS or worse Fox News or even local news. Stone’s politics are unashamedly left wing particularly for an American as he damns the likes of not only Bush and Nixon (although it is highlighted that under Nixon this was one of the most liberal periods for American society despite the escalation of the war in Vietnam) but also Reagan with some particular criticism leveled at Harry S. Truman and Eisenhower; he even goes to the point of reading some sense of irony in Truman’s surname. One thing that’s clear for no matter how bad or how much we put down Britain through our media at least it is not sanitized. Americans could learn a lot from their own modern history from this documentary series of 10 hour long episodes but in the end he will probably be labelled a pinko or commie. I defy anyone to say that America has no history after watching this documentary that covers less than 75 years of American history, untold or otherwise.

Chris Hick