The Gilded Age: A Free Historical Documentary That Helps Make Sense of Our Own Fraught Times

Ever-increas­ing eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty, rapid tech­no­log­i­cal change, the cre­ation of dom­i­nant cor­po­ra­tions con­trolled by a small busi­ness elite, politi­cians in the pock­et of big busi­ness lead­ers, and the rise of pop­ulism and nativism. These are all fea­tures of Amer­i­can life in 2025. But our nation has also seen this movie play before, most notably back in the Gild­ed Age, which ran from the 1870s through the late 1890s. Above, we have a free two-hour doc­u­men­tary on the Gild­ed Age cre­at­ed by PBS. They write:

In the clos­ing decades of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, dur­ing what has become known as the Gild­ed Age, the pop­u­la­tion of the Unit­ed States dou­bled in the span of a sin­gle gen­er­a­tion. The nation became the world’s lead­ing pro­duc­er of food, coal, oil, and steel, attract­ed vast amounts of for­eign invest­ment, and pushed into mar­kets in Europe and the Far East. As nation­al wealth expand­ed, two class­es rose simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, sep­a­rat­ed by a gulf of expe­ri­ence and cir­cum­stance that was unprece­dent­ed in Amer­i­can life. These dis­par­i­ties sparked pas­sion­ate and vio­lent debate over ques­tions still being asked in our own times: How is wealth best dis­trib­uted, and by what process? Does gov­ern­ment exist to pro­tect pri­vate prop­er­ty or pro­vide balm to the inevitable casu­al­ties of a churn­ing indus­tri­al sys­tem? Should the gov­ern­ment con­cern itself chiefly with eco­nom­ic growth or eco­nom­ic jus­tice? The bat­tles over these ques­tions were fought in Con­gress, the courts, the polling place, the work­place and the streets. The out­come of these dis­putes was both uncer­tain and momen­tous, and marked by a pas­sion­ate vit­ri­ol and lev­el of vio­lence that would shock the con­science of many Amer­i­cans today. The Gild­ed Age presents a com­pelling and com­plex sto­ry of one of the most con­vul­sive and trans­for­ma­tive eras in Amer­i­can his­to­ry.

To a cer­tain degree, this doc­u­men­tary will help you make bet­ter sense of our own fraught times and per­haps feel more opti­mistic about where we might end up. (It’s worth keep­ing in mind that the dis­rup­tions of the Gild­ed Age even­tu­al­ly gave way to the reforms of the Pro­gres­sive Era.) What’s more, if you’re watch­ing the excel­lent HBO series, The Gild­ed Age, the film pro­vides his­tor­i­cal back­ground that will direct­ly add to your appre­ci­a­tion of the show. You can watch the film online above, or find it in our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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