WQED considers why we don't speak french

When you hear the phrase "the war that made America," that war should be pretty obvious.

The Revolutionary War first comes to mind.

If not, it's got to be the Civil War, which forged America as the modern industrial superpower in its fires.

Strike two.

"The War That Made America," WQED's four-part, $13-million-plus documentary refers to the French and Indian War, which the filmmakers contend had an impact far larger than once thought, and set the stage for the Revolution. But aside from "Last of the Mohicans," for most Americans, the French and Indian War is as dense and mysterious as the trackless forests of 18th-century Western Pennsylvania.

There's a lot of work to be done, starting with that name.

"I always jokingly say I wish we could call the series, 'Why we don't speak French,' " says writer-producer-director Eric Stange, who worked on episodes 1 and 3. "If things didn't happen as they did in that war, the whole future of North America would have turned out very differently."

WQED's involvement -- and the impetus for the whole project -- comes from the fact that so much of the war took place in our own backyard. To celebrate the 250th anniversary of the war, the Allegheny Conference decided upon a feature film, inspired by historian Fred Anderson's book "Crucible of War" (Alfred A. Knopf, 2000).

Anderson asserted that "the forks of the Ohio" -- which became Fort Duquesne, then Fort Pitt, then Pittsburgh -- was the key that unlocked the rest of the continent for whoever controlled it.

The French and British empires, with their Colonial allies -- Americans with the Brits, Canadians with the French-- fought for control of the isolated forts and forests of the New World -- with the Indian nations as the wild card, trying to to preserve their own precarious dominions by playing the intruders off against each other.

The ulterior motive of the film is to promote the region and its historical resources -- with the ultimate goal of making Western Pennsylvania a well-known destination for history buffs, similar to the popularity of Gettysburg and Antietam.

Money for the project came primarily from the local foundation community, plus some corporate support and a little from state sources. There was also a National Endowment for the Humanities "We the People" grant of $1 million.

It came in under-budget at $13.7 million, says WQED's Deb Acklin, the films' co-executive producer, though that's still a huge price tag for a PBS project. It includes marketing, outreach, websites, educational materials and tie-ins to historic sites. Fred Anderson has written a new book with the same title, and there's also a CD soundtrack of the music.

WQED was given the mission of taking the film forward and giving it shape in 1999. They hired veteran PBS documentarians Stange and Ben Loeterman.

"There's a huge challenge in making films about subjects that predate photography," Stange says. "When you take something like that on, you're kind of going into enemy territory for a documentary filmmaker."

Loeterman worked on episodes 2 and 4.

"It's a seminal piece of American history that really hasn't been told," he says. "Anytime you have a crack at something like that, you have to grab it. You think, 'I can't believe somebody hasn't done this before.'

"Then you start to dig into it, and you realize why somebody hasn't done it before. The research is sometimes very dense, leads you to difficult sources to access, sometimes in French. And you're trying to tell a rounded picture, which means always keeping a Native-American point of view in mind, for which there isn't a traditional record."

The filmmakers didn't want a typical History Channel-style documentary, with professorial talking heads broken up by period art and small reenactments. They decided to treat the reenactments as the heart of the film, giving the battles the vast, panoramic sweep of a Hollywood epic, but keeping the historical accuracy of a PBS documentary. Of course, these requirements were often opposed.

"What we came up with was actors speaking to the camera in the context of a scene -- almost as an aside -- with 18th-century dialogue driven by their writings," Loeterman says. "We wanted to guide our audience through this complicated, fairly dense, but hopefully dramatic piece of history. So our narrator, at that point, should come onscreen."

The narrator, American Indian actor Graham Greene, walks on the set just as action ends, explaining the context and ramifications.

"What we did have were feature film techniques, to give a sense of 'bigness,' to make the war believable," Loeterman says. "We had to create shots that one just can't do with the budgets we're working with. We were fortunate to employ CGI (computer-generated imagery), multiplying people onscreen, getting these big, wide shots.To have that was a tremendous resource -- and a relief. We could tell this story as film drama, and hopefully get away with it."

A team of historians -- including Fred Anderson -- kept track of the film's every step from script to screen. Two historians were on-set at all times.

With a documentary, filmmakers can't create storylines for dramatic impact. Luckily, dramatic characters swiftly emerge.

Tying it together is the figure of George Washington, a callow, ambitious young Colonial officer who unwittingly kicks the whole thing off when he ambushes a French force in the Pennsylvania wilderness -- and his Indian allies kill the French ambassador. Washington makes numerous blunders, and bristles at his treatment by the British while pining for a British officer's commission of his own. But he's shaped by his experiences, and slowly grows into the man who would end up on the dollar bill.

During the course of the war, each nation's fortunes swing wildly and each has its moments of heroism, wanton brutality and utter stupidity.

For awhile, it looked like Americans would have to learn French. Their rapport with the Indians and greater understanding of frontier fighting gave them an early advantage over bullheaded English martinets like Gen. Edward Braddock. But valor and vigor can only hold out so long against superior numbers, logistics and political will.

"My take on it -- I think the French made a terrible miscalculation about where the riches of the New World were," Stange says. "They thought the riches were really in the Sugar Islands of the Caribbean. At the time, sugar, slaves, were the prize of the economy of the 18th century. The British were much more interested in farming and settling land.

"That translated into the French not really having a deep will to win this war," he says.

"The War That Made America" was shot in the Laurel Highlands, taking advantage of some of the actual territory that saw these events take place.

Instead of bringing in crews from Hollywood or elsewhere, local talent was, in most cases, given the opportunity to take part.

"Pittsburgh still has an awesome filmmaking community," says WQED's Acklin. "We had a lot of people who also worked on 'Inspector Gadget' or 'Silence of the Lambs,' etc. They brought a real theatrical-film sensiblity to the project, which contributed to the strengths of the actors, the costumer, the research, all the way down the line. The lighting crew was local. Special effects and stunts.

"Probably nine out of 10 of the actors are from Western Pennsylvania or Ohio," she says, "though for the Native Americans, we had to go to New York and Canada."

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Details

'The War That Made America'9 to 11 p.m. Jan. 18 and 25, WQED.