Before I share with you my review of the silent era classic The Birth of a Nation, I think we should step back a moment and consider how sophisticated we have become at using moving pictures (with sound!) to create gripping social commentary. Check out this gem:
Now consider D.W. Griffith's legendary epic, also known as The Clansman. Chris requested that we order this one from Netflix. I was shocked, but I didn't argue. I, too, have fallen victim to the I'll-put-this-movie-in-my-queue-because-I-should-watch-it-one-day trick when what I really want to do is just watch any two star movie that shows up on the Encore Action channel. When the Netflix movies show up, they sit on the shelf for weeks, maybe months, until we send them back or maybe occasionally watch one.
Last night, we finally decided to give this one a go. Maybe it's the kung fu or the fact that I drink a lot more water these days, but I was actually able to stay awake and attentive for the full 187 minutes. Chris gave up after about 5. Had I not mentioned that the movie was 187 minutes as I put the disc into the player, Chris might've lasted a bit longer.
I thought I might force myself to watch the film to fill in the gaps of my questionable film school education, but I quickly realized that the film was easy to watch because it was, well, good. This is actually the surprising and frightening realization about this film. The movie didn't spend 44 weeks in the theater in New York simply because it was controversial. As is often noted by modern critics, this film demonstrates incredible technique in the art of filmmaking. It's so well done that it's even accessible to a modern, skeptical, and fickle audience like me.
Why is this so frightening? Well, after being drawn into a compelling story about North versus South, friends killing friends, lovers split by war and ideology, you might not consciously realize that you've been steered in the direction of sympathy for the poor southern family who's lost so much during the war, not the least of which are two out of three sons. As the second half of the movie begins, you have even more reason to feel sympathy for these helpless white folk as they are overridden by zealous politicians from the North determined to elevate the rights and power of the uneducated black masses above all else.
At this point in the film, a modern audience might begin to question the version of history being delivered here. I mean, wow, that Reconstruction must've been tough for those poor white souls who had been nothing but good to those thankless slaves. Clearly, the negroes of the time were nothing but vengeful, lazy, drunk, and obsessed with having sex with white women. They had no right to have guns or be elected to office. Blocking the white men from the polls alone was an unforgivable offense. Something had to be done.
Enter our heroes: the Ku Klux Klan. It's a sickening experience to be watching an army of white-hooded men and horses descend on a town overrun by the heathen blacks and realize, as horrific as you know the scene to be, you are still holding on for the last scene in which Lillian Gish is saved from the corrupt mulatto by her savior in white. If even I, a San Franciscan liberal jaded by the tactics of our modern Republican marketing machine, can feel some level of sympathy for the oppressed Southern white man, what in the world might we expect of an impressionable new audience to the big screen in the early 1900s?
I'll tell you what you get: a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, an organization all but destroyed following the Civil Rights Act of 1871, and a legacy of filmmaking techniques that manipulate our feelings and influence our opinions to an extent beyond our comprehension. Luckily, Hollywood films aren't that good anymore, so maybe we're in less danger of being led astray. Riiiiiight. Maybe it's good I didn't see The Birth of a Nation in film school. I might've lost my fascination with the moving image all together.
