Ken Burns and PBS Bring ‘Hemingway’ Film To Life

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s three-part, six-hour documentary series, HEMINGWAY, examines the visionary work and turbulent life of one of the greatest and most influential American writers – Ernest Hemingway.

Intimate and insightful, the series weaves together Hemingway’s biography with excerpts from his fiction, non-fiction and personal correspondence – a structure that nods to Hemingway’s own creative process of drawing inspiration from lived experience. The film penetrates the mythology surrounding Hemingway – cultivated by his larger than life exploits, public bravado, and occasional tall-tale – to reveal a deeply troubled and ultimately tragic figure. His story is told with the help of interviews with literary scholars, celebrated writers including Edna O’Brien, Mario Vargas Llosa, Abraham Verghese, and Tobias Wolff, and Hemingway’s son, Patrick. Six years in the making, HEMINGWAY is a treasure trove of rarely seen photographs and archival footage. The film is further benefitted by unprecedented access to original manuscripts that show the painstaking process by which Hemingway created some of the most important works of fiction in American letters, including the novels, The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea; short stories “Hills Like White Elephants,” “The Short and Happy Life of Francis Macomber,”“Up in Michigan,” “Indian Camp”and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro;” as well as nonfiction works, Death in the Afternoon and A Moveable Feast. Hemingway’s words are brought vividly to life by Jeff Daniels. Meryl Streep, Keri Russell, Patricia Clarkson, and Mary-Louise Parker read the voices of Hemingway’s four wives. Original music is provided by Johnny Gandelsman and David Cieri.

“Hemingway” premieres April 5-7 on PBS. (6 hours)

Check out a trailer for the project below.