Rich visuals give 'Summer of Love' some sparkle

Will PBS die out with the baby boomers? Some days it's hard not to wonder, when you consider how frequently the network revisits the dramas of the 1960s, and how little it explores ways to distinguish itself from the other nature, history, and news channels. In a comparison that should be more absurd than it is, PBS sometimes looks like VH1 Classic , the oldies offshoot of VH1.

"Summer of Love," tonight's installment of the documentary series "American Experience," isn't a bad trip; indeed, it's a nicely put-together hour about 1967, the year that San Francisco became the holy land for hippies. Concisely, directors Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco give us a time and place where American ideals and realities clashed and yet no guns were fired.

But still, the Summer of Love and other landmarks have already been pored over in countless other documentaries about the 1960s. There they are again, the beautiful people, blowing bubbles in Golden Gate Park, painting one another's faces, listening to Timothy Leary, and dancing to the music of the spheres. They've gone to San Francisco, and they're wearing flowers in their hair.

Naturally, the documentary, narrated by David Ogden Stiers , also notes the national climate leading up to 1967 -- the jolt of the Kennedy assassination, the outrage over Vietnam, and the heightening of the civil rights battle. And of course there are interviews with the dependable 1960s spokespeople, including Peter Coyote. You know the drill.

The arc of the documentary is from utopia to broken dream. After the purity of the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park on Jan. 14, 1967, the news media began to promote the coming Summer of Love in San Francisco. Thousands of "summer hippies," drug addicts, and runaways found their way to the Haight-Ashbury district, to the chagrin of many locals. The intentions of the original hippies, who found LSD a way to rethink their basic assumptions, were quickly buried beneath the growing number of drug casualties, STDs, passive kids simply looking for a free ride, and busloads of tourists out to glimpse the nutcakes.

By October 1967, the original hippies were moving out of the city, and a symbolic "Death of Hippie" mock funeral signaled the end of the new beginning.

"Summer of Love" delivers lots of footage from 1967, and it is all beautifully restored. The thing that gives this movie a more visceral impact than some of its predecessors is its rich visuals. At moments, the documentary seems to drop you on Haight Street in the middle of the scene. So much of what was important about the hippie movement, before it was distorted, was the way it used culture to try to change the world. Clothing, music, art, language, community, they were the weapons of choice. "Summer of Love" puts us into the heart of that battle.

Despite the dying of the hippie light, "Summer of Love" is, like so many movies of its kind, nostalgic at heart. But, 40 years after the Summer of Love, is it possible that the dream is still alive in some fashion? Is there another ideal afoot? Is there not another ideal afoot? As PBS moves forward, perhaps PBS can move forward.

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. For more on TV, visit boston.com/ae/tv/blog/.