The Birth of a Nation

The first half of this movie, if sold as a finished product by itself, would be remembered alongside movies like The Jazz Singer. A technical landmark that mostly holds up but is held back by some cringe-inducing elements of the time. The reality is that Birth of a Nation keeps going after the assassination of Lincoln. And in the second half, the intent of the film becomes one with the text and the reality of what you're watching becomes impossible to ignore. D. W. Griffith has famously claimed that he had no ill intent in making the movie, but after having seen it, Griffith was either lying or so monumentally blind to his own prejudices that he should never have been allowed out of the house.

This movie is not anti-Union, it is not pro-Antebellum south. It is anti-Black. The movie frames the ending of slavery as the beginning of the end for civilized society in the south, brought about by a conspiracy of carpet-baggers and scheming mulattos and blacks. The answers to this issue are redemptive violence by the Klu Klux Klan and a return to the master-servant relationship of slavery. The movie frames "the loyal soul" blacks who accepted their ownership and didn't want slavery to end as the redeemable memebers, while those that welcomed the end of slavery did so entirely to then turn that systemic violence back against the whites.

I genuinely do not believe that you can understand how malicious and hateful this movie is if you haven't seen it. One can have it described to them, one can know the individual scenes of hatred within, but until one has experienced the slow, pernicious leaking of racial hatred firsthand, it can't sink in how contemptible this movie is.

Technically important? Yes, nobody is denying that. Even as the movie's message becomes more and more evil, it is shot with a competency and ambition that it would take the rest of the industry decades to catch up to. It is worthy of preservation in that regard. But it is also entirely indicitave of the era that a movie which makes such strides (and was the first film to see great success in America and be played in the white house) is a movie which frames the idea of a white man being expected to shake a black man's hand as an indignity which exceeds lynchings and enslavement.

I don't think there's ever been a more maligned phrase than "politically correct" out there; the words immediately evoke a kind of liberal pseudo-fascism that some would have you believe is dominating freedom of speech and thought around universities and media outlets everywhere. I'm not so sure about that, but I am concerned at the counter-trend, of things that are labeled politically incorrect now proudly sporting that label as if they were a rebel, a David fighting these psedo-fascist Goliaths. That is hardly the case. D.W. Griffith's movie, far from being a politically incorrect movie unfairly condemned by the liberal elite, was a movie that perpetuated and, to a certain extent, created a Southern Myth that was damning to black people all throughout the country. The scary bit about this movie is not that it is one voice amoung many giving a personal recount of reconstruction. The movie is not presented that way, nor was it received that way. Until the 1960s, this movie WAS the commonplace, everyday understanding of reconstruction, understood by both Northerners and Southerners (aside: notice how the movie intentionately put as much distance between Northerners and Southerners as possible? The enemy is blacks and "radicals" (who were nothing of the sort), not Lincoln or the union soldiers. The movie was trying to appeal to a Northern audience).

Anyone who ever complains about the political correctness or historical "revisionism" of today's academics, see this movie. And understand, that it is the work of historical "revisionists" that are responsible for teaching the facts about our nation's history, grasped out of the hands of fictions like Griffith's horrific Birth of a Nation. And don't be so smug about complaining of political correctness in the future.

And don't try to seperate this film as an artistic work with the historical perspective of the film. Keep in mind, this film was not only a portrayl of history, it was also a *part* of history. It served to defend racial segregation, lychings, and the Klan at a time when all three of those were very real political issues. It is not a coincidence that the greatest period of lychings and Jim Crow laws came shortly after this movie. In short, this film oppressed people. So don't treat it like it existed in an entertainment vacuum, unaffected by and unaffecting everything else around it.

I am a Ph.D. candidate in American History. I show BOAN (as does most American history professors) to my undergrads. Not only is it an accurate portrait of the propaganda being written in the 1870s, but it is a primary source document on how people in the 1870s and 1910s saw African Americans. Anyone wonder why the Civil Rights movement happened, or why lynchings happened, or why ML King, Jr.was assassinated? Well, watch BOAN and you'll get an insight into that most American of institutions, racism. Why is there racial hatred today, because of the rhetoric of hate by the people who made BOAN and the people who are depicted in it. If they affect you still, shouldn't know what they said? Especially if you find it abhorrent, watch it. It is also a good reminder of how distorted history can be made to look legitimate on celluloid.

The conventional wisdom about "The Birth of a Nation" is that it represents an impressive and innovative display of cinematic skill that was unfortunately wasted on a story that promotes a bizarre and disturbing point of view. While that is certainly true in a general way, it might also be something of an oversimplification.

It really is almost like two different movies. The first part, which takes place in the era before and during the Civil War, contains little objectionable material, and it deserves praise both technically and for the acting. The second part, set in the reconstruction era, contains almost all of the disturbing material, and it also is really not all that great in terms of cinematic quality.

Then also, the degree to which "The Birth of a Nation" may have influenced the development of cinema has very likely been overstated . The controversy that it generated may very well have helped it to remain better known than other films of the era that were equally innovative and/or lavish, or nearly so.

If the movie had ended shortly after the memorable and well-crafted Ford's Theater scene, the anti-war sentiment and similar themes would remain the main focus, since the effects of war on families and individuals is depicted convincingly and thoughtfully. In that case, its occasional lapses would possibly at the worst be called "dated", given the quality of the rest of this part of the movie.

The second half, though, is completely unfortunate in almost every respect. Not only does it promote a distorted viewpoint, but the story becomes labored, and the characters lose their depth and become more one-dimensional. The purely technical side, such as the photography and the use of cross-cutting, might still be good, but much of the rest of it loses its effectiveness.

Perhaps more importantly, it really seems rather difficult to justify the credit that this one film gets in the development of cinema. There had already been numerous feature-length movies, and most of the techniques that Griffith used were also in use by others. He may well have been ahead of the pack in terms of appreciating their possibilities, but that does not mean that cinema would not have developed as it did without this particular movie.

Just as one example, the Italian epic "Cabiria", from the previous year, has the same kind of lavish scale, is quite resourceful in its techniques, and is quite entertaining, without causing so much controversy.

Other early feature-length films also include some creative efforts to adapt film-making techniques to longer running times and more complex stories. Finally, many short features from the pre-Griffith era experimented with the same kinds of techniques that he later would use systematically. There's no denying Griffith's considerable technical skill, but others of the era also deserve some credit, even if they and their works were less controversial, and are now largely forgotten as a result.

This is some incredible movie making. The skill involved is simply incredible. But the racism overwhelms it during the second part. It is very hard to watch. It should not be negated or forgotten. Neither its genius nor its abhorrence.