Leonardo da Vinci, on PBS

He was like the Orson Welles of the Renaissance. Everyone knew he was brilliant, but he still had trouble finishing projects. Of course, he left behind enough to judge his genius—like the Mona Lisa. He led an eventful life, which is fortunate since he has already been the protagonist of fictional series from Starz and CW. Now the true Renaissance man becomes Ken Burns’ first non-American subject when the two-part Leonardo da Vinci (co-directed by Sasha Burns and David McMahon) premieres this Monday and Tuesday on PBS.

Yes, Leonardo was illegitimate, but the battery of historians and talking heads do a nice job explaining why that really wasn’t such a big deal at the time. Frankly, the same was true for his presumed sexuality in pre-Savonarola Florence. There is still a good deal of speculation regarding Leonardo’s life, particularly his early years, but the law firm-sounding trio of Burns, Burns, and McMahon do a nice job of covering all the periods of his life, from Vinci to Florence and then onto Milan and eventually France.

Logically, they focus and good deal on his work, particularly his sketches, codices, and scientific journals. Frankly, they make a convincing case Leonardo really was hundreds of years ahead of his time, especially with regards to his deductions regarding the structure and mechanics of the human heart.

Of course, it is also frustrating to hear about all the commissions he left incomplete or had canceled at the last minute. Arguably, they had to give “Vetruvian Man” roughly equal time as the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, because that is what they had to work with.

The U.S. and the Holocaust, on PBS

In the 1930s, Hollywood studios gave the German counsel veto power over prospective scripts to preserve access to a lucrative international market. Businessmen like Henry Ford lobbied to maintain friendly relations with the National Socialist regime, to protect his business interests in the country. Does any of this sound familiar to contemporary viewers? Yet, co-directors Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, or Sarah Botstein, never draw any parallels to the Xinjiang genocide, which their PBS brethren at Frontline described as “the largest mass incarceration of an ethnic group since the Holocaust.” That silence is deafening in their new three-part documentary analyzing American silence, The U.S. and the Holocaust, which premieres Sunday on PBS.

Frankly, many viewers might be surprised to hear in the first episode that an estimated one million Americans protested Hitler and his anti-Semitic policies in the 1930s. Unfortunately, politicians were reluctant to take any kind of stand against the Axis or to aid the Allies—especially European refugees (whom were predominantly Jewish).

Burns and company largely associate the neutrality movement with anti-Semitism, which is surely partly true. However, the talking heads never mention the US Communist Party (which was at its peak of influence in the 1930s) relentlessly campaigned against American involvement in the War, until Hitler violated the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. More fundamentally, nobody really acknowledges how fresh memories the horrors of WWI were for Americans at this time. Still, there is no denying the ugly effectiveness of demagogues like Lindbergh and Coughlin.

Throughout the docuseries, the filmmakers and commentators contort themselves into pretzels to not judge FDR too harshly. However, Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long emerges (deservedly so) as the chosen villain of the narrative, for his determined efforts to prevent humanitarian immigration and delay relief efforts the victims of the German regime. If nothing else, they successfully make their case against him.

To give credit where its due, Burns et al do acknowledge those who tried to do the right thing, including American rescuer Varian Fry. William Hurt portrayed Fry in Lionel Chetwynd’s cable film Varian’s War, but he still has yet to receive the acclaim he deserves. However, the preponderance of the allotted time is devoted to indicting America’s failures to live up to its ideals.

Ken Burns does Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway synthesized war and alcohol into great literature better than anyone else. It didn’t work so well for his relationships. Yet, the multiple marriages became part of his troubled artist mystique. Decades before the rise of social media, Hemingway became the ultimate celebrity novelist. Ken Burns and Lynn Novick examine the man through his life, literature and carefully cultivated public image in the three-part Hemingway, which premieres Monday on PBS.

Documenting Hemingway’s life and work really requires nearly six hours, because he had so many distinct periods that directly inspired novels and stories. There was his Michigan youth, WWI, Paris, Spain and bullfighting, hunting in Africa, the Spanish Civil War, WWII, Cuba, and his late career struggles with depression and writers’ block. Burns and Novick take them in order, making for a slow start in part one (“A Writer 1899-1929”), with his early years and the Nick Adams stories they inspired.

Things pick up with WWI and Hadley in Paris. However, the sequences covering the Spanish Civil War in part two (“The Avatar 1929-1944”) are by far the best of the series. Burns and company fully explore the tension between Hemingway’s own libertarian inclinations and his sympathy for the Loyalist cause. They also clearly establish the degree to which Stalin dominated and eventually purged the Republican ranks. Hemingway’s resulting break with the disillusioned John Dos Passos is duly covered, as well as the self-censorship of his journalism. Yet, he also gets deserved credit for the brutal honesty of For Whom the Bell Tolls and the massacre of a Franco-supporting village it so vividly depicts.

None other than the late, great Sen. John McCain testifies to the greatness of Bell, which is an unexpected treat. Weirdly, though, the late A.E. Hotchner (probably Hemingway’s closest living friend at the time of filming) is only heard from briefly, discussing the writer’s sad final days in part three (“The Blank Page 1944-1961). Only one family member participates (on-camera), but it is a significant one: Hemingway’s surviving son, Patrick. Unfortunately, notable biographers like Carlos Baker are long gone, but it is interesting to hear the often diametrically opposed judgments of novelists Mario Vargas Llosa and Edna O’Brien.

Ken Burns Goes Original Gangster: Prohibition

They thought if Prohibition could make it here in New York, it could make it anywhere. Well, it didn’t. The combination of some of the hottest night life, wettest politicians, a large immigrant population, and close proximity to the Canadian border and Long Island Sound made enforcement more or less impossible. Ken Burns and his filmmaking partner Lynn Novick bring their flair for assembling archival material to bear on America’s misadventure with temperance in Prohibition (promo here), which airs three consecutive nights on PBS, beginning this coming Sunday.

Perhaps the best installment of Prohibition is the first, A Nation of Drunkards, in which a number of preconceptions about the prohibition movement are challenged. In the years leading up to the 19th Amendment, consumption of hard liquor was far greater in America than it is now. Evidently, public drunkenness was a genuine social problem that attracted the notice of the reform movement. Indeed, more than a religious phenomenon, prohibition was initially aligned with progressives and the suffragette women’s movement.

Perhaps most tragically, “dry” activists provided decisive support for the 16th Amendment establishing the federal income tax. Until then, the U.S. government had been overwhelmingly dependent on liquor taxes to fund its operations. Unfortunately, it would not be repealed by the 21st Amendment, along with the notorious 19th it helped bring about.

Burns and Novick’s Prohibition is also quite adept at capturing the colorful character of several notorious bootleggers, who sprang up in the tradition of old western gun-slingers. Though Al Capone got the most ink (which was always how he wanted it), the example of former Seattle copper turned gangster Roy Olmstead might arguably be more significant. Eventually taken down through wiretaps, his case launched a branch of Constitutional law still debated to this day.

Unfortunately, the talking head segments are a tad weak this time around for Burns and Novick. Should you have a drink every time the audience is told we cannot legislate morality, you would be very wet indeed. Presumably, this means they also advocate repealing every morally motivated reform from the Progressive Era, perhaps starting with child labor laws.

Commentators who suggest there are often unintended consequences to government regulation are rather more on target. Yet, there do seem to be concrete lessons to be learned from the Dry interregnum that Prohibition the film prefers not to belabor. For instance, we learn the brewers tried to throw the distillers under the bus rather stand united against the increasingly militant temperance movement. For their efforts, they got the absolutist Volstead Act, putting everyone out of business, at least temporarily.

Once again, Wynton Marsalis provides an original era-appropriate jazz score that evokes the free-wheeling spirit of the speakeasy milieu. However, the rich voice of Keith David, the narrator of Jazz and Unforgivable Blackness, is definitely missed in Prohibition. Frankly, lead narrator Peter Coyote sounds rather dry (so to speak), by comparison.

Combining striking images, good history, entertaining music, and so-so social commentary, Prohibition is PBS’s marquee event of the season. A finely crafted production, it is definitely well worth watching (though perhaps with a bit of Tivo fast-forwarding). It airs back-to-back-to-back this Sunday through Tuesday (10/2-10/4) on just about every PBS outlet nationwide.

(Photo ©Scherl/Sueddeutsche Zeitung/The Image Works)