A remarkable ensemble of screen legends, including Gregory Peck, Stacy Keach, Lloyd Bridges, Geraldine Page and Colleen Dewhurst star in one of the most compelling, thoughtful and comprehensive Civil War films ever produced. Based on the works of Pulitzer Prize winner Bruce Catton, The Blue & The Gray is recognized for its historic accuracy, dramatic intensity and spectacular battle sequences. Filmed entirely on location in Arkansas with over 160 characters and 6,300 extras, this searing saga contains all the stirring conflict and narrative lyricism of such cinematic masterpieces as Gone with the Wind and Glory. The film brilliantly reconstructs an eternally fascinating and controversial era in American history when families and nation were divided between the black and the white, the North and the South and The Blue & The Gray.

Before Ken Burns, Glory, and Gettysburg, the Civil War proved an effective backdrop for this 1982 miniseries--available complete and uncut on this three-disc set--about two families divided by the War Between the States. John Hammond stars as John Geyser, a Southerner caught "betwixt and between" when he becomes a war correspondent for the Northern newspaper published by his uncle. Like a Civil War-era Forrest Gump, he finds himself "where history's in the making," from the Battle of Bull Run to the scene of President Abraham Lincoln's assassination. Stacy Keach costars as an Army scout who takes the "fresh off the farm" Geyser under his wing. Julia Duffy is the schoolmarm who loves Keach. The ham-handed dialogue is a guilty pleasure ("What's wrong with this land that produces such a bitter fruit?" asks the embittered Geyser). The meticulously mounted battle scenes, though, are a Civil War reenactor's dream. --Donald Liebenson