Fantastic video. Great job pulling in historical quotes and references. Very well done and entertaining!

Accurate or not, I love the ending with the time lapse graveyard to the present.

With regard to the Irish being given citizenship in exchange for service in the Civil War: My great grandfather, immigrant from Ireland in about 1860-61 was told that joining the army would grant him automatic citizenship, or so he said...it’s possible he may have misunderstood, he was an Irish language speaker who may have had shaky English skills. However, he served not only in the Civil War, but remained in the army as his career until he retired. In 1906, the year in which he ultimately died, he investigated his immigration (citizenship) status, discovered that he was, in fact, NOT a citizen. He remedied that situation, being sworn in as a citizen after a long career in the US Army and a relatively) brief period of retirement, during which time he married (an Irish-speaking Irish immigrant) and produced at least ten American-born children.

You know what isn’t accurate? Cameron Diaz’s Irish accent.....

I loved this movie even with the long running time never a boring scene Gets better every time I watch it. Daniel day Lewis is such a phenomenal and believable actor in this movie.

I can’t get over Daniel Day’s insanely amazing performance!! His character is one of my all time favs. He’s also one of the greatest actors ever

I remember watching this movie as a child, and thinking how unrealistic and fantastical it all was- dare I say even whimsical! With the top hats and costumes, the gang living in an old mineshaft or cave, Throwing fruits at performers on stage, brawling firefighters, etc, etc. It looked like a world from a fantasy novel. BOY was I surpirsed when I learned that's how people actually lived. Having grown up in the 90's and 2000's it seems so alien!!! Suffice to say, it is now one of my favorite films.

There is a scene in Gangs of New York which amazed me, jaw dropping. From a ship at dock young Irishmen are disembarking, walking down the dock to land. On the dock is a desk with a Union soldier writing down names as a Union officer informs the Irishmen they are recruited into the Union Army. This scene reenacted exactly family lore of my Irish ancestor who arrived in NYC in 1861. He was recruited into the Union Army while disembarking from the ship he took from Ireland. He entered the 8th Connecticut Regiment; fought at Antietam, was wounded when AP Hill made his flanking attack against the Union left saving Lee's army. He settled in DC and for my family the rest is history. Great scene, good movie.

Definite fan of the movie. When I found out "The Dead Rabbits" was an actual, historical gang, I became much more intrigued by the story portrayed in the film. Thanks for producing this insightful look into the actual history behind "Gangs of New York."

So we just gonna ignore the fact there actually was a cat woman...Hell Cat Maggie. That shits crazy.

I took a class under Prof. Anbinder (pronounced Anne-bine-der) when I was an undergrad at GWU. He said he had worked as a historical consultant on the film. He said every time he would point out the history of the time, Scorcese would shoot him down saying it has to match the tone of the film or he had had a dream about it. The only suggestion he had that was put in was the different color ballots for different parties used during the election scene.

In the opening scene Priest Valon teaches Amsterdam the St. Michael prayer, however that prayer wasnt composed until the 1870s by Pope Leo XIII.

This recommendation was spot on; stopped watching, watched the movie, enjoyed it, and came back to the video. Great job!

So are you telling me people rioted and fought before 2020? Get out of town.

Good choice - hit every notable entry that History Buffs hasn't covered. Was shocked that they haven't covered this one.

I always loved this movie. One of my ancestors was Isaac Varian the 63rd Mayor of New York from 1839-1841. He was the leader of Tammany Hall from1835 until 1842. He died one year after the draft riots. I really felt this movie portrayed the times and feel of that era. An absolute masterpiece!

At the end of the movie, I like how Martin Scorsese do the time-lapse from 1860's to present on the same background scene while U2's soundtrack, "The hands that built america", plays.

So why isn't this stuff taught in schools? Why do I have learn about it randomly on KZfaq? Amazing stuff.

"Thank God, I die a true American." Villain or not, that line was beautiful!

"Did this really happen?" I asked my mother 18 years ago, when I first saw this movie. She didn't have an answer, but after all this time you've given me one. Thanks!

its authentic not accurate

One of my all time favourite movies. Daniel Day Lewis was nothing short of amazing as Bill the Butcher.

Absolutely Phenomenal take on all this. Without making it a political focus, the potato famine was also coupled with the exportation of food from Ireland at the same time as the potato blight. Any irish (or even scot which experienced much the same treatment during the Highland clearances) would say that the immigration of gaelic populations, was the result of attempted genocide. The word "Famine" has been used to subvert the actual extent of the treatment of irish people, however when you look at that in context with Irish America, it helps to explain why the irish were very much fed-up, why they had to fight for even identity.

Cool video. 10/10. - Great breakdown of even some of the minor parts of the movie - Great graphical cutscenes etc. - Great audio. (not monotonous).

Back in my catholic school years in Dublin, our history teacher played this for our class. All my 14 year old eyes saw was the violence, but watching it now I see it for the hugely important story it's trying to tell, that's still relevant today. Amazing film!

Gangs of New York is one of my favorite Scorsese movies. My favorite D.D. Lewis film, and just an all around kick arse flick

Wow.... this was the fastest 20 minutes I’ve ever experienced. This is such a good video. I haven’t ever heard your channel but I’m checking your stuff out now. KZfaq recommendations for the win.

William Poole didn’t die from the leg wound. He was shot in the chest after he fell to the floor. He did survive for 14 days after. Great video, love the history!

As a Limerick man whose ancestors somehow survived the Great Genocide and avoided a coffin ship (as I'm still here bemoaning the rain); It always annoys me how people whinge about Cameron Diaz and Di Caprio's accents. The characters they play are born and bred in the USA so if they had a distinct dialect from a region of Ireland like I do, it would be strange.Their accents and characters are Irish-American and I've never had a problem with it. There are plenty of authentic Irish accents in the movie as Amsterdam (Leo) alludes to narrating and describing whilst walking through the 5-Points - great scene too

The firefighter scene is more accurate than many may think. The history of firefighting in that era is absolutely amazing and fascinating. Truly criminal stuff, with the engine companies fighting one another both figuratively and literally

Thank you for pointing out the Irish-African American relations. Irish in mass supported generally racist Democrats through out the 19th century and were active participants and instigators of the anti-black riots not only in 19th, but in the 20th century also. There's an active myth of "we are Irish - we can't be racist!", which is close to saying "we are German - we can't be nazis!"

As an Irish person I made a point of watching this film although the xenophobia and religious bigotry of Nativists was something I was well aware of beforehand. Some of the things in the film did seem larger than life to me but I was more concerned about the message the film appeared to want to convey. And for me that message was primarily about the destructive nature of prejudice. I think the film also said to Americans that America was not nearly as welcoming to 'the huddled masses' as they sometimes like to believe. The film should have reminded us Irish and our diaspora of the hypocrisy of us whinging about how we have been treated whilst demonstrating Nativist attitudes to immigrants who arrived in places after us.

This remains my favorite Scorsese film. My only real issue with the film is that the editing of certain scenes is spotty, but can be ignored. It’s one of my favorite films of all time.

Really good movie. Its just a seemingly perfect fit for describing the way the standards of life were in such times. Brutal and unforgiving.

The biggest irony of the film was Daniel Day Lewis throwing a knife at a picture of Abraham Lincoln then portraying him 14 years later in another movie.

I watched this video because i was curious about the accuracy of this movie. The fact that you're splitting hairs on some of these examples so much makes me respect this movie for being damn close to the mark, as well as a very entertaining, moving period piece.

Interesting that the Protestants and the Catholics brought their centuries old feud with them to mid 1800's New York.

Just found you and this video. Nicely done! Your review does a fantastic job dealing with one of the difficulties of being a historian and reviewing historical fiction (be it movies or novels). I particularly liked your quote "if you can put aside (historical inaccuracies) then this does a great job of capturing the themes of the era if not the actual history itself." This is a perfect way to describe the historian's quandary: enjoying a film or novel but getting slowed down by historical inaccuracies. Ever considered doing a similar review on "Glory"? Enough historical inaccuracies and still a fantastic film. Thanks again. Cheers!

The book which the movie was based on, "The Gangs Of New York", did mention about Chinese immigrant presence before the Civil War.

And this many years later....people are STILL crammed into small apartments so the owners can get more money.

Wow! I thought almost everything was made up for this movie, I guess not! Good video!

Martin really had a 1800’s new york built for this movie.

A surprisingly rewatchable epic I haven't tired of. The sets and costumes create an otherworldly cinematic immersion 👽🌎 Memorable characters like the chilling, charming Bill The Butcher add significantly to the entertainment value, while historical inaccuracy is reason enough to dig deeper.

Very well done. My father kept the original printing in the library, and I read it as a teen. After she film, I read it a second time as well.

The gang members were much better dressed and more politically aware back then...

When i was young i looked through a garbage pile and found a book from the 1890s called "Darkness and Daylight or Lights and Shadows of New York Life" originals can be found cheap. It's full of etchings taken from photographs along with writings by a retired chief of police, a woman involved with a Christian charity and a detective. The cultures of gangs, sailors, beggars, pickpockets, opium dens and others are detailed. One of my favorite books ever! In it I found that the Humane Society for the prevention of cruelty to animals preceded and supported Child protection law!

The only major inaccuracy is the scene around the church. That is a factual scene but happened in 1836 and was the beginning of the Ancient Order of Hibernians in America. The story is good and factual but the sequence of some events is not always accurate.

Even the Romans had street gangs, looks up the blues and greens.

Much of the same with the Irish here in what was Upper Canada, and then Canada. My Great Great Grandfather (Peter Ryan) could only make it to Alderman (St George Ward) in Toronto in the late 1880's. Interesting in today's climate. Good video!!

I always thought this was Scorsese’s best film since Goodfellas, blown away when I saw it at the cinema, got the feeling the audience did not appreciate it but I sat there in awe! And the ending credits felt like the most stylish thing I’d ever seen.

This story is about my neighborhood

This was once the only movie TNT owned.

Good job man. I enjoyed that. Its worth mentioning that these movies are theatrical and not documentaries, there "poetic license" is acceptable to tell a dramatic story.

This movie got me heavily interested in US history

This video is sooo good! And it did 1.5 million views! Why have you not done a whole series like this with historical movies?? I would watch them all lol

I’m pretty impressed with your video. You definitely deserve more views and recognition

As a historical reenactor myself, I've always loved the clothes in this film...excellent wardrobe...

Excellent video and commentary on one my favourite movies and a time and place period that has begun to fascinate me more and more, away from the 1790-1820 period i've been mostly fixated on. Thank you for creating this excellent video, I can't wait to see what else you come up with!

The first “Irish” immigrant wave was much earlier, the Protestant Anglo/Scots/Ulstermen who served with George Washington, indeed many as senior officers and even generals eg Knox of Fort Knox fame.

Brilliant film. Scorsese deserves all the usual prizes -- pulitzer, national book award, nobel for literature, etc. He is in the same league as Kubrick and Coppola and very few others.

The scene of firefighters fighting each other and hearing how the municipality operated is interesting. They weren't ran by the city and on their own program

Can’t wait to see the Gangs of Portland sequel!!!

The Draft Riot is one of the saddest points; exploited, impoverished immigrants turned against other exploited people. The Irish had faced oppression, colonisation, several famines and rebellions and during An Gorta Mór forced to emigrate to America where they thought they would get a better life. When they got there they were forced into the army or still lived in poverty. In the five points they mixed with the free African Americans initially relations were good and tap dance was created through mixing of African and Irish music and dance. But then tensions started to rise with more Irish people arriving and with emancipation coming for African American slaves. The press began to print anti black stories and pseudoscientific talks. They’d started to spread that the free slaves would come and take their jobs. This stoked tensions and started to drive the wedge. The Irish had just faced starvation and didn’t want to face it again. When conscription came and black people were exempt because they weren’t considered citizens (3/5ths of a person) and this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. But instead of joining up with their African brothers and sisters and working class solidarity against the upper class oppressors, they took the anti black bate and during the draft riot cruelly lynched and murdered black people. It’s heartbreaking. People who had stood in tears back home in Ireland at the stories of Frederick Douglass about his and black American brothers and sisters treatment in America , here in America they now were lynching them. It’s shameful and in hindsight we can see how it was engineered. I wonder how things would have turned out if they had have stood in solidarity instead of forcing themselves up the ladder by pushing the black Americans off.

The Irish gangs were an extention of the Irish of clans. Ireland was a system of warring clans. In the movie, it is shown that only Irish that were from the same county in Ireland were considered kin. The Irish system of clans warfare went back to before the Romans.

Much like Master & Commander, while not historically accurate, Gangs of New York is historically authentic.

My favourite scene is the way the Natives melt out of the scenery and when Day Lewis strikes the ground with his stick and each time in zooms in on his eye 😄

Wonderful video!! ..My friend was a NYPD detective for many years. He said by far the most vicious gang was the "Westies". An Irish gang centered in Hell's Kitchen. Jack said that if they got a "Westies" call, the officers would be pretty nervous. lol Makes sense... a long history of grit.

The 5 points were no different from the east side of London back then I presume?

You got the Irish famine part wrong. It wasn't the potato blight that was the cause. It was English rule.

One thing I’ve come to understand about street fights and scuffles is that usually the number of people dead is very low. Watch any clash and you’ll see that most people are sticking to their side and occasionally grappling with an opponent. People don’t just throw themselves into the opps like they do movies. Most fights only a few people are REALLY fighting and everyone is trying to survive. People weren’t just magically suicidal back in the day. My point being that just because “only 8 people died” doesn’t mean it wasn’t a massive fight.

Great video, I love the film and I am pleased to see the tone, and themes were accurate. Now I'm off to watch it again......

You can have a thoroughly enjoyable time watching this film and fast forwarding through every scene that Daniel Day-Lewis isn't in.

I really enjoyed the film, one of my favorites, but I never knew it was portraying actual events. I knew that some of the people did exist (like Tammany and others), but I thought it was highly fictionalized. Cool to see that it does take inspiration from real stuff though, even if the timeline is fudged and condensed. This was a great video, thank you for teaching me something new.

Can confirm. Movie is exactly what happened in New York in the 1980s.

Messing around with time frames is common in film and television, one example is "Peaky Blinders" which has the gang being formed by men returning from the First World War, in actual fact by this time The Peakies were long gone, their heyday was at the end of the 19th and early part of the 20th centuries. My grandmother was a member of the Simpson family, at the time her brothers, noted street fighters, were known for their antipathy to the Peakies.

This was a great video and so interesting! I’m glad I found you. Can’t wait to watch more!

There's plenty of heightened reality in any movie due to dramatic needs and artistic license, but beyond that consideration, "Gangs of New York" is reasonably accurate.

This is super interesting. Thanks for making such a great video on one of my favourite films!

The final scene of this movie it always gives me chills: see the past of time on how very important moments and people became ruins of time is very Romantic/Pantheistic to the core. Always enjoyable movie.

Love your stuff dude. You actually brought me into the game because I stumbled on your videos when looking at something I don't even remember. Keep it up my dude!

Fascinating! Thanks for the analysis of what I thought was a intriguing, but largely just a "sad" film. This video helps explain it's significance beyond it's spectical. Thank You!

Stove pipe, brother. Not stove top.

Excellent job of research and profound thought. I tend to criticize everything but I could not find a fault, well done !

My second favorite Scorsese film, just behind TAXI DRIVER, and one of my favorite historical epics! It was clearly a labor of love for Scorsese, who spent decades planning this project and had already captured the gritty side of New York. And that he had TIME film critic Jay Cocks as co-writer and was able to get Italian studio Cinecitta (which had done Biblical epics like QUO VADIS? and BEN-HUR and the series ROME) to recreate the Five Points was nothing short of astounding!

Sydney had the razor gangs. They had a huge fight in the post Great War period in Kings Cross. No guns were used due to gun laws but they fought with cut throat razors. .slashing at each other.

I very much agreed with you there at a point you made at the end where people were accusing it of cherry picking the most explosive of events and you largely dismissed that argument this is a part of American history that rarely gets displayed and as such I don't mind the somewhat broad brush he painted with because he got so much right. If it were another WWII movie or something like that I would want it to be very specific as we already have great movies about it generally and the place to go to mine for interesting content is to get specific at this point. But the relatively unsung part of American history needs more of the poetic truth to give people an idea of the feel before it's important to get into the nitty gritty of the details.

I saw it when it first came out. Being married to a descendant of the Irish who fled because of the Famine I knew some of the errors you pointed out, but not most of them. Great video!

great comparison with book, its amazing any immigrants survived the poverty and resentment that greeted them- nice video thanks so much

The scene where Irish immigrants were being inducted into the army right off the boat was, as you say, a bit of a stretch. Or, put another way, a crock. According to civil war historian Bruce Catton, the Irish as a percentage of the population were underrepresented in the army.

One person who's definitely out of time and place is the character called "Monk" who carves notches on his bat for each person he's clobbered with it. He's based on Monk Eastman, the 'Prince of Gangsters', a Jewish gang leader from the lower East Side a generation or two later. By his time, Five Points was full of Italian immigrants and their gangs battled Jewish gangs.

Well now you’ve peaked my curiosity - I need to watch this now...

I remember seeing this brand new when I was 14 or 15 and realizing that was going on 19 years ago makes me feel old. Lmao 😅

Brilliant video! enjoyed it through and through. Thanks a lot and cheers!

RE: Your conclusion. It makes me sad that people thought the cherry-picking was to paint America in a bad light. I think it's important to have an honest look at American history, all of it, even the things we're ashamed of. It was definitely cherry-picking, but for dramatic affect. And I'm fine with that. The opening scene tells you immediately not to take this film literally, so don't. I appreciate your analysis and appreciation for the film as a work of art, not necessarily an accurate historical piece. I think Scorsese took just enough license without spreading outright lies. It made me interested to learn more and I did.

New Amsterdam aka NY was quite similar to most early metropolises at this time. Just like London for example. Some people think "ghettos" or "no go areas" like favelas are a modern days phenomenon, while in fact it isn't. It appears everywhere at any time where extreme poverty of a great mass collides with the need of economic competition.

Just found this channel and I love it!

"he based it off multiple paintings and engravings..." 1:22 must have overlooked that half the people in those paintings were of color.

Amazing video. Perfect summation of the film, and it's pseudo-historical connections to the period. Also one of my favorite movies if that counts for anything!

That scene in this video at 3:38 I think is supposed to be a depiction of a famous photo called Bandits' Roost. The timeline is historically "off" but the sentiment is there. This is right at "Mulberry Bend" on Mulberry Street in NYC. The whole block was eventually razed. There are some ironies about what was built right next to this area but I'll let you read about the history of the Five Points.

This was just so awesome. I love this movie and it was great to see the historical accuracy depicted on fact rather than opinion. Keep up the good work! I look forward to more of your videos.