Mark Twain is a documentary film on the life of Mark Twain, also known as Samuel Clemens, produced by Ken Burns in 2001 which aired on Public Broadcasting System on January 14 and 15, 2002. Burns attempted to capture both the public and private persona of Mark Twain from his birth to his death. The film was narrated by Keith David.
Contents
Voice actors and subject interviews
The voice of Mark Twain was provided by Kevin Conway and the voice of Olivia Langdon Clemens was portrayed by Blythe Danner. Other voice work was provided by actors Philip Bosco, Carolyn McCormick, Amy Madigan, Cynthia Nixon, and Tim Clark. The film also includes interviews with playwright Arthur Miller, novelist and Twain biographer Ron Powers, writer William Styron, poet Russell Banks, historian John Boyer (executive director of the Mark Twain House), Harvard University professor Jocelyn Chadwick, Stanford University English literature professor Shelley Fisher Fishkin, comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory, actor Hal Holbrook, animator and actor Chuck Jones, and Mark Twain scholar Laura Skandera Trombley.
Critical assessment
Mark Twain Legacy Scholar Barbara Schmidt asserts on her website twainquotes.com that some artistic license was taken, resulting in some historical inaccuracies and misrepresentations. She also notes that some of these errors are the result of the Twain scholarship during the time that the documentary was made, and that more recent scholarship has revealed some of the factual errors that are in the documentary. Schmidt's website twainquotes.com is widely cited in academic publications on Twain and is highly regarded as an authoritative resource within Twain research.