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ABOUT THE FILM
Following the Battle of Antietam, Col. Robert Gould Shaw (Matthew Broderick) is offered command of one of the United States' first all-African-American regiments, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. With junior officer Cabot Forbes (Cary Elwes), Shaw puts together a strong and proud unit, including the escaped slave Trip (Denzel Washington) and the wise gravedigger John Rawlins (Morgan Freeman). At first limited to menial manual tasks, the regiment fights to be placed in the heat of battle, and fulfills its destiny mounting an attack on Fort Wagner overlooking Charleston, South Carolina.

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Directed by Edward Zwick
Screenplay by Kevin Jarre, based on Lay This Laurel by Lincoln Kirstein, One Gallant Rush by Peter Burchard, and the letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw
Produced by Freddie Fields
Cinematography: Freddie Francis
Edited by Steven Rosenblum
Music: James Horner
Release date: 15 December 1989
Running time: 2h 2m

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Memorial Day 2026 arrives amidst a maelstrom of unprecedented military circumstance. Trump's feckless war in Iran plays out free of diplomatic and congressional constraints, making it difficult to link this moment with solemn tradition. Still, Memorial Day brings its inevitable check of our nation's memory banks, especially in cinema, the repository of so much of our canonical popular history, and with that we may hope to regain our bearings regarding what we hold dear. The themes are perennial – What justifies war-making? What leads soldiers to kill, and to risk their lives? – and each generation must face them for itself.

Upon its release, Glory was acclaimed as one of the most significant movies ever made about the Civil War, and its reputation has only grown. No previous film had taken the measure of Black Union soldiers' decisive contribution to the war effort, and few if any have since. Despite a few significant liberties taken, the conditions under which Black soldiers labored are portrayed realistically, as are the horrors of battle. Glory has become one of the most commonly screened films in high school history classes across the country, and Black students in particular have drawn upon it to make Civil War history their own. It stands forth as a paragon of what can happen when informed history-telling and a talent for entertainment come together.

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TRAILER, RATINGS, EXTRAS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OS-OE1EcHI

Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer: 95% of 62 reviews
Metacritic: 78 (generally favorable) based on 22 reviews

Glory was awarded Oscars in 1990 for Best Sound and Best Cinematography. It also marked a milestone in the career of Denzel Washington, who won Best Supporting Oscar for his portrayal of the fiery escaped slave Trip.

Princeton historian James M. McPherson, whose Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era received the 1989 Pulitzer Prize, hailed Glory's unique achievement, writing in The New Republic. https://newrepublic.com/article/91210/tnr-film-classics-glory-january-15-1990

Faced with a dearth of Black Civil War re-enactors, Glory's producers arranged an 1860s-style abolitionist rally in a large white tent on the lawn of the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site homestead in Washington D.C. A local gospel choir and a brass band playing period instruments got the recruiting drive off to a start. In the end, 42 men joined Company B of the 54th, most of them Black professionals from the Washington metropolitan area interested in contributing to a movie about Black history and in bringing Blacks into Civil War reenacting.

A historical note: Sergeant William H. Carney of the 54th managed to save the regimental flag from capture during the retreat from Fort Wagner, lifting it from the dying hands of color bearer Thomas R. Ampey. Because of his deed, Carney became the first Black soldier to receive the Medal of Honor. The flag remains on display in the Massachusetts State House.

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BLURBS & ATTITUDES
Glory is, without question, one of the best movies ever made about the American Civil War. The reason isn't just the way in which Kevin Jarre's script illuminates a frequent oversight of history books, nor is it the fine acting or epic feel that director Edward Zwick achieves on a modest budget – although those elements are part of Glory's effectiveness. Rather, it is the way in which the filmmakers weave an impressively large historical tapestry without ever losing sight of the characters that make up the individual threads. Glory has important things to say, yet it does so without becoming pedantic. ∞ James Berardinelli, ReelViews

Glory is the long-needed antidote to Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind. With a grave clarity that echoes Augustus Saint-Gaudens' Boston Common monument and Robert Lowell's angry poem "For the Union Dead," Glory not only does justice to its deserving subject, but brings it into the popular consciousness with a distinction that compels respect. ∞ Jay Carr, Boston Globe

Voice-over narration makes effective use of the real-life Shaw's correspondence, but in terms of authenticity the battle sequences are truly impressive. Marching across open fields amid cannon-shot, or plunging into hand-to-hand combat, the stark clarity of Freddie Francis' cinematography combined with Zwick's intimate style evokes immediacy and fear. ∞ Time Out

Richly plotted, alternately inspiring and horrifying, Glory is an enlightening and entertaining tribute to heroes too long forgotten. ∞ TV Guide Magazine

The movie is really an ensemble piece that is more about the time and the circumstances than it is about the eccentricities of particular characters. As in a pageant, the characters serve principally to illuminate a glorious moment of history, which they do with consistent conviction ....The toll taken in each battle was, of course, enormous. Yet still the men continued to move forward. They had to believe in what they were doing. For all of the carnage and suffering, the Civil War was a time of limitless optimism for many, something that now seems immensely sad. Glory is celebratory, but it celebrates in a manner that insists on acknowledging the sorrow. This is a good, moving, complicated film. ∞ Vincent Canby, New York Times

Yet precisely because of their lowly status, these men had a more than usually powerful need to assert their manhood through deadly exertion. Glory is at its best when it shows their proud embrace of 19th century warfare at its most brutal. Director Edward Zwick graphically demonstrates the absurdity of lines of soldiers slowly advancing across open ground, shoulder to shoulder, in the face of withering rifle volleys and horrendous cannonade. The fact that the 54th finally achieves respect (and opens the way for other black soldiers) only by losing half its number in a foredoomed assault on an impregnable fortress underscores this terrible and brutal irony.
Kevin Jarre's script makes no direct comment on these matters, and a squad of fine actors ground the film in felt reality: Denzel Washington is a proud and badly misused troublemaker; Driving Miss Daisy's Morgan Freeman a steadying influence; Andre Braugher a Harvard student who finds Emersonian idealism of small help in mastering the bayonet. It is the movie's often awesome imagery and a bravely soaring choral score by James Horner that transfigure the reality, granting it the status of necessary myth. Broad, bold, blunt, Glory is everything that a film like Miss Daisy, all nuance and implication, is not. But arriving together, they somehow hearten: they widen the range of our responses to what remains the central issue of our past, our present, our future. ∞ Richard Schickel,TIME

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