BBC“电视史上的里程碑”，当代艺术历史最具雄心壮志的纪录片拍摄工作，由著名艺术历史学家克拉克爵士担任编剧与主持，探讨西欧文明，而爵士更在本片中界定了人类文明发展中的几个重要阶段。《文明的轨迹》历时两年才拍摄完毕，剧组跨越13个国家，曾走访百多个城市拍摄，本纪录片首年播出时更被喻为电视史上的代表作。克拉克爵士引人入胜的对白，再加上欧洲地标动人画面，带领我们探索自罗马帝国沦亡至工业革命用其后的文明发展。这种通过艺术、音乐来呈现历史观点的做法，成为日后无数纪录片看齐并努力超越的基准。
"Kenneth Clark's sumptuous,magisterial,one-man servey of the achievements of bumanistic civilisation is a TV landmark" The daily mail
In 1966 BBC Television embarked on its most ambitious documentary series to date.The eminent art historian Lord Clark was commissioned to write and present an epic examination of Western Eyuopean culture,defining what he considered to be the crucial phases of its development.Civilisation:A personal View by Lord Clark would be more than two years in the making,with filming in over 100 locations across 13 countries.The lavish series was hailed as a masterpiece when it was first transmitted in 1969.
From the fall of the Roman Empire to the Industrial Revolution and beyond,Clark's compelling narrative is accompanied by breathtaking colour photography of Europe's grearest landmarks.This "history of ideas as illustrated by art and music'remains the benchmark for the numerous programmes it inpired.
特别收录 Special Feature
大卫·艾登堡禄爵士回忆《文明的轨迹》制作过程 Sir David Attenborough remembers the making of Civilisation
剧相馆 Photo gallery of behind-the-scenes stills

Francis Bacon's paintings have been called sick and corrupt. He has also been hailed as the greatest British painter since Turner. This film study - Bacon's first appearance on BBC Television - shows his work and its sources, and critically assesses his paintings. (1966)

Jan Vermeer (1632-75) was little known outside Holland either during his lifetime or for more than 200 years after his death, yet he is now acknowledged to be one of the most gifted and intriguing painters of the seventeenth century. This film looks at the social, political and scientific context in which this most enigmatic of painters lived, from the birth of an independent Dutch society to the incredible developments in the fields of optics, astronomy and geography that so transformed the seventeenth century. Vermeer's life and his art is shrouded in mystery - he left no papers, no drawings, no clues as to the meaning or intention of his paintings, and he died leaving such substantial debts that his widow was forced to sell all his work. This film explains his revolutionary techniques and his exploratory process of pictorial composition while academics including Jonathan Miller and Svetlana Alpers discuss the meaning of Vermeer's settings and subjects, and the formal simplicity and intensity of feeling that make his jewel-like paintings so moving.