American Experience (TV Series) The Orphan Trains (1995) User Reviews

Keep some Kleenex handy when you watch this one...

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 1 December 2011]

This film was about the work of the Children's Aid Society--a group from New York that placed orphans and destitute kids in homes across America for about 75 years starting in the mid-1800s. Much of the film consists of kids who were placed by this organization and they tell their stories. MANY of them are sad but many more are very positive and very touching. These stories, combined with VERY evocative music, cannot help but pack an emotional wallop. In fact, I really do recommend you have some Kleenex handy--as this film is sure to touch you.

A few of the more memorable stories that you should look for is the funny one about the kid who bit and kicked the person that wanted to adopt him--and how this turned out great! I also was quite touched by the man talking about the boy he adopted (the guy must have been 90-100 in the interview)--such tenderness and compassion. All in all, a very well made and sweet film. Well worth seeing.

Solid. intelligent documentary

[runamokprods · 7/10 · 15 July 2013]

Solid and informative documentary on how the Children's Aid Society of New York, founded in 1853 by a compassionate young minister named Charles Loring Brace, for 75 years helped over 100,000 orphaned or unwanted kids from New York City find homes with rural families, mostly farmers, across the country.

The film is helped by the amazing photos by Jacob Riis of New York's street kids, but even more by the first hand accounts of the kids who made this journey to becomes strangers in a strange land.

Some are read from letters and diaries by actors as voice-overs accompanying old stills or black and white modern footage of trains and country side. But far more arresting are the interviews with some now old survivors of the journey, most of whom look back on the the families they found with great fondness, without white-washing how difficult and strange the changes in life could be. Indeed the film acknowledges that the kids were used as cheap labor, and at times were ill-used and became run-aways, although the clear implication was that was the exception not the rule (and kids working for a living was not a rarity for the time).

Perhaps most moving is a man who must be in his 90s at the time of filming, remembering with a quiet, stoic love the son he adopted, who died at 72.

Always interesting, somehow this documentary never crossed over into the more emotional experience I had expected, and can even feel repetitive at times, but is well worth seeing for an intelligent 1st person telling of a little known piece of American history,