Galileo: On the Shoulders of Giants

A good movie to teach about the great Galileo, it does get a little goofy at the end, but it does hit on several key points: his genius, his theories, the Inquisition, and what happens in his later years.

I showed this video to my 7th grade students. They enjoyed it. It fit well into my Scientific Revolution unit. My only complaint is that the details state that the video is 95 minutes, when in actuality it is only 55 minutes.

Great to show scientific advancements and struggles for early astronomy great teaching tool and very informative holds student interest as well.

I show this film in my Italian Language class in Middle School. It is all in English, I wish I could get the Italian version. Great story, great pictures and you have Galileo teaching one of the young Medici boys about science, it lead to this family helping artists and scientist through the Renaissance. Great first film for Renaissance studies to develop and it is filmed through the eyes of this young boy. Middle Schoolers love it.

This story conveys the political side of science that is often not considered. Though not exactly a historical documentary by any stretch of the imagination, it gives a toned down idea of the relationship the existed between government, church and science. Kind of silly in spots but the ending is worth it.

Love this movie! Great for my 6th grade science class.

about a man who determines that the planets rotate around the sun, creates a telescope and is a teacher. his ideas go against church teaching, so, he has to recant and spends his final years on house arrest. rip.

Well, if you're an anti-Catholic bigot, just LOVE empty-headed after-school specials, and know absolutely nothing about the truth of the Galileo case, I'm sure you'll love this badly-acted bit of foolishness. I had my students watch it. The bad acting pained them. One asked: "What did we do to you that made you so angry that you forced us to watch that idiotic thing?" The problem was, I had assigned them to read the actual historical documents on the Galileo case BEFORE they watched the movie. So they saw all the historical absurdities at once. Bottom line: childish pratfalls, intellectually dishonest anti-religious bigotry, along with remarkably stupid historical inaccuracies. As an example of propaganda and bigotry, it's great. As history, well, put it this way: the Scottish accents in the movie "The 300" is closer to the truth of the Spartans than this boring drivel is to Galileo.

great