The Birth of a Nation Reviews

(OK) New vison and my same old refusal of racism: it not only simplifies character and facts, distorts scenes (the girl cound't be raped, she had to kill herself; mulattos has to le lascivious more than clever, bah)...

It is once again a huge classic I have been postponing indefinitely and for several reasons. First of all, I always find it a daunting prospect to watch a 3 hours long silent feature and its notorious and controversial reputation was not really attractive. Eventually, I must admit it, the first half was actually quite impressive. Indeed, it was a really intriguing depiction of the Civil war, displaying the impact on the people of the North and the South. There were also some very well made battle scenes, especially considering the fact that it is a 100 years old feature and it must have cost a fortune back in those days. However, in the second half, Griffith went completely apeshit on us and the whole thing became really despicable. Where should I start? First of all, the way black people were described was just really awful. Indeed, they are basically portrayed as evil, ignorant and completely useless. It was so disturbing that even at the time many people were really outraged. But, it doesn’t stop there, no… While the first part seemed pretty accurate historically speaking, in the second half, they gave an alternate version where the North and South were actually bonding against the black oppressor ruling in the South and the Ku Klux Klan was described as some kind of rightful resistance group… Seriously, you got to be kidding me… . Still, even though you don’t agree with Griffith's ideas (I’m not, that’s for sure), you have to bare in mind that the guy was actually a visionary and he has single-handedly created most of what we know of the cinematic language (intercutting between various scenes, establishing shots going to medium shots going to close-ups,…). When you see this movie, you don’t notice those tricks because you have seen them in 100s of movies that came afterwards but he invented all these things. So, from a technical and historical point of view, it is quite a valuable feature and it is usually considered as the birth of the modern American cinema but the ideas developed were just disgusting and the whole thing felt terribly misguided. To conclude, even though I didn’t like it, since it is such a classic, I still think it is worth a look, especially if you are interested in cinema history.