American Experience - Jesse James Review
Having caught this on PBS, I was immediately motivated to purchase the DVD to include in my historical library. I have seen a longer documentary effort last year: "Jesse James; Outlaw-Legend-Terrorist", but found it too dependant upon sensationalism to get it`s point across.
Here, American Experience does it`s usual quality effort; Historians comment as Period Photos and Newspaper Headlines illustrate a concise, yet insightful sketch of one of the most famed--and fictionalized-- figures in American history.
Jesse James was a product of His Time, with the flawed attitudes and perspectives of his Generation armed to the teeth and given license to rampage and kill during the Civil War. That he continued and made personal his war with society AFTER the war ended is what has made an heroic legend out of a thief and murderer. The point is amply made that The James Gang were NOT a band of Robin Hoods, but a band of hoods out robbin`. The heroic mythos that sprang up was a pure invention rather than reflective of any real intention on the outlaw`s part.
Much has been written, filmed, and theorized about Jesse James.
Much of it flawed and false.
Where this documentary succeeds whilst others fail is in presenting the facts and also addressing James` monumental egotism and his inability to STOP being "Jesse James" even as the metaphorical rope was closing about his throat.
With the recent release of the film "The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford" ; I would recommend this documentary for anyone wanting a solid documentary as a research tie-in. This would have made an excellent 'extra' for that film. The focus on James` dark psyche is an aspect all-too-often overlooked by those who seek to either lionize the man or villify him.
Jesse James seems to be either A Hero or A Villain to most, and the facts here cover both bases.
No one as complex as James can be dispensed with a simple one-word summation.
So, whether your interest in Jesse James is one of Historical Biography or Psychological examination; you will find much to appreciate here.
The Bold Outlaw and The Curse Of Idolatry are well illustrated.
American Experience - Jesse James Overview
The story of Jesse James remains one of America’s most cherished myths… and one of its most wrong-headed. Jesse James, so the legend goes, was a Western outlaw, though, in fact, he never went west; America’s own Robin Hood, though he robbed from the poor as well as the rich, and kept it all for himself; and a gunfighter of the first water whose victims, in reality, were almost always unarmed. Less heroic than brutal, James was in fact a product, from first to last, of the American Civil War; a Confederate partisan of expansive ambition, unbending politics and surprising cunning, who gladly helped invent his own valiant legend. A member of a vicious band of Missouri guerrillas during the war, James sought redemption afterwards. But as this AMERICAN EXPERIENCE production reveals, year by year, he rode further from it, redeeming instead the great and glorious memory of the Old South. In a life steeped in prolific violence and bloodshed, he met what was perhaps the most fitting end; like so many of James’s own victims, he was himself an unarmed man, shot in the back.
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