chanvat

I've seen many documentaries on Prohibition, but all have the major flaw of relying solely on interviews from historians and experts, no interviews from people who lived and drank during the period. In the case of this documentary, the only interviews are of people in their late 70s and 80s who actually lived and were either old enough to drink during Prohibition, or took advantage of it as a bootlegger or supplier for it.

All the hypocrisy of Henry Ford was laid out plainly, as well as government officials, Coast Guard, local police in Detroit, on and on. I appreciated this documentary also pointed out that even though Prohibition was an abject failure, it did reduce drinking rates in the country, something you never seen in documentaries about this period, so there was a bit of a balance, if short. This is extremely hard to find, and only released on VHS officially once 30 years back, but if you can get it, it is well worth seeing.