Tuesday, February 19, 2013

The Birth of a Nation



Hide yo' kids, hide yo' wives.


The Birth of a Nation
1915
Director: D.W. Griffith
Starring: Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Henry B. Walthall, hundreds upon thousands of extras

I will tell you this from the outset: I have precious little original content to say about The Birth of a Nation.  My opinion of this film is fairly similar to that of pretty much everyone else.  You won’t be gleaning anything terribly new here.

So… let’s get this started, shall we?

The Birth of a Nation is about arguably the most violent and disruptive of decades in American history, the 1860s.  We get an introduction to two families – the Camerons of the South and the Stonemans of the North – right before the American Civil War breaks out.  The first third or so deals with the war, then later we see Lincoln’s assassination.  The final portion of the film deals with the South after the war, about rebuilding and reconstruction, and, in what is so ridiculously troubling, about the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. 

I’ll start with the good, because there is good to say about this film.  The Birth of a Nation is often credited with “inventing the language of film,” and it would be difficult to argue with this statement.  I’ve seen a few films made prior to this, and I’ve seen another film from the same year as this (Les Vampires).  D.W. Griffith did not invent the concept of the “epic film,” (Les Vampires is even longer than Nation’s three hour running time), but he certainly took the concept of film to a much higher level.  Unlike Les Vampires, which feels like a filmed play, Nation has crosscuts, close-ups, intercutting, flashbacks, and even a bit of a moving camera.  Griffith defines what makes a movie different from a play with The Birth of a Nation.  While this might not be apparent to a thoroughly modern movie-goer, it’s apparent by watching the other films of the 1910s that Nation was a game-changer.  The “language of film” gets a vocabulary lesson.

And yet.


Why, oh why were such inventive film techniques brought to us through such a stomach-churning story?  The first hour, the one that focuses mostly on the Civil War, is fine enough, establishing many classic war movie tropes in one go.  Even the fact that Griffith tells the story from the vantage point of the South (his father was an officer in the Confederate Army), sympathizing them while brutalizing the North, is fine.  But once the Civil War ends we are treated to some of the most ludicrous racial stereotyping nonsense, so horrible that I have trouble getting through it.  The black characters in the film (most of whom were played by white actors in blackface) are nearly all portrayed as lascivious, lawless, power-hungry beasts who will beat the white men into submission while marrying all the white women.  And the only possible way the white race can save itself?  The Ku Klux Klan.  Don’t worry, white women, the KKK will save you! 

I don’t even…

I rewatched most of this film in order to write this review, even though I knew what I wanted to say.  I admit, I had forgotten just how archetypal the Civil War sequence is, how influential it was on war films, and that’s worth noting.  Griffith portrays the jubilation of the South heading off to war, the chaotic frenzy of the battlefield, followed by the despair of returning home to a ruined homeland, all formidably portrayed.  While All Quiet on the Western Front certainly portrays the disillusionment with war with greater sophistication, there is a similar sense here.  So I am glad that in watching this again, I remembered this portion of the film I had forgotten.


But then the film gets silly and the racial absurdities become too many to name, and I feel my stomach literally turning over.  And then our “hero” (Walthall) gets “inspired” to invent the KKK, and my patience is significantly shortened.  I just can’t.  Knowing how much intolerance and bigotry this particular organization has inflicted in the last century in America, how much violence and hatred it has instilled, how its effects are undoubtedly still felt in some areas of the American South, I can’t see them as any type of hero.  Griffith claims to have been blind to what he was doing, and he was, apparently, legitimately surprised when people took issue with his portrayal of race relations.  I just don’t get it.  How could he not know what he was doing? 

I had to stop watching.  I couldn’t make it through the final half hour.  I was impatient, disturbed, and frustrated.  I was NOT going to watch the KKK save the day.  I couldn’t.

The Birth of a Nation is troubling.  It advanced the art of filmmaking by light years, but it did so by telling an utterly reprehensible story.  I would never recommend anyone see this unless they needed to for a class or if you’re a list completist.  I get no sense of pleasure from watching this movie.  I respect what Griffith did in terms of filmmaking techniques, but after that, this one gets a resounding “NO” from me. 

Arbitrary Rating: 3/10.  It scrapes a few points for technical merit.

10 comments:

  1. Sadly, there are films like this. I had the exact same reaction to this one. I had a similar reaction to Triumph of the Will. On the one hand, the film techniques are so good, so new, so innovative...and in service to such a repellent story.

    And yeah--saw it once, appreciated the technique, and never again.

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    1. Oh my, I had blocked Triumph of the Will from my memory, but yes, it's definitely of the same ilk. Thanks for reminding me of that unpleasant experience, Steve. ;)

      So would Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will make the most morally repugnant movie marathon ever?

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    2. Ouch. Yeah, might be. You'd definitely need a palate cleanser, like a week of Naked Gun and Airplane movies.

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    3. Airplane is a suitable antidote to most anything. Airplane - for whatever ails ya!

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  2. Your story is a very precise description of what I went through when I saw Birth of a Nation, except that i forced myself to see it through to the end. When I had to make my comments on it I cheated and based it on my memory of it rather than sit through the ordeal again (there it went, I admit my crime). I fully recognize the historical significance for film making and history in general, by why why why should such an important piece be made over such a repulsive story and message? All subsequent Griffith films were for me coloured by this immense faux pas.

    Yeah, BoaN and Triumph of the Will would be the marathon from hell. Throw in Greed just to stretch the experience

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    1. I remember that you're not the biggest Griffith fan. I, at least, did not start watching his films with this one, so his more melodramatic ones remain separated from the awful, awful message of this one.

      I *had* seen Birth of a Nation before, all the way through, but was watching it again to write about it - but I couldn't quite force myself to make it through the whole damn thing for a second time.

      Watching all three of those movie on the same day would make me want to pluck my eyeballs out. Yuck.

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  3. As others have said, the reason to see this is its place in film history, not its story. I do remember being impressed by the battle scenes.

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    1. The battle sequences definitely get a short shrift when it comes to talking about this movie. The controversy is so overwhelming its hard to see much else.

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  4. I watched this movie in college, for an Intro to American Films class, almost twenty years ago at this point. I chose not to re-watch it for all the reasons above, and therefore didn't write up a review of it for the Club. The single part that really stands out in my memory is the scene with U.S. Grant and Robert E. Lee after the Confederacy's surrender, which to this day informs how I picture those two, to the point where I have to remind myself that those were actors portraying the historical personages 50 years later. But that short, silent scene speaks volumes about how Southerners at the time (and well beyond) view themselves and how they view yankees. (I grew up in New Jersey and now live in Manassas, Virginia - I hope I'm allowed to make sweeping generalizations like that.)

    At any rate, I agree that BoaN is highly significant in the historical development of cinema, and I also agree that no amount of significance can outweigh the moral failures of its KKK apologism/boosterism. BoaN is maybe even more illuminating for its insight into U.S. history than film history, not that it's an accurate chronicle of the events of the Civil War and Reconstruction but it is a time capsule of how some Americans viewed themselves and their story at the dawn of the 20th century, when many of them could still remember the 1860's and 70's, or knew someone who could.

    - Sunny D

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    1. I literally groaned when I saw it pop up as Movie of the Week for the Club because (me being me), I knew I'd have to write about it, which would require watching it again. It's bad when the thought of watching a movie elicits such a strongly negative reaction in me. I completely understand your decision to forego this particular review.

      You bring up an interesting point about this film being made when the Civil War was a more recent memory, and it's one I've often thought about when watching the really old silents. I'm rather fascinated by what the people I'm seeing in these old films lived through. To them, the Civil War was still far more familiar, and WWII was decades away.

      In general, I have found myself experiencing history through an oddly effective lens by watching films chronologically by decade from The Book. The Great Depression was always just something I had read about in history class, but watching movie after movie after movie from the thirties - and forties - that had the Great Depression as a backdrop, I started to slowly understand just what a huge event it was. I had never comprehended before, but I did once I watched the movies of the era - at least, better than before.

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