What's the AFI Project, you ask? For more information, or if you just enjoy my bemused ramblings, read here: http://www.spout.com/blogs/pippin06/archive/2008/3/1/25756.aspx
The Birth of a Nation is on the following AFI list:
The Original Top 100 (#44)
Netflix, as usual, supplied me with a DVD copy of this film, which is a good thing because I had no intentions of watching it until I discovered that it was on the Original AFI list. I didn't even add it to my queue until I reached its placement on the list. My disclaimer going into this entry is that my day job—you know, the one I shouldn't quit?—is working as a civil rights investigator for state government. In other words, I investigate complaints of discrimination and harassment. Thus, my make-up is generally anti-racist, anti-prejudice, anti- anything that would remotely fall into this category. Now, if you don't already know, The Birth of a Nation is a silent film by renowned filmmaker D.W. Griffith that was, essentially, propaganda for the Ku Klux Klan. In fact, its release and widespread popularity actually incited the once-dormant Klan to renew its efforts in the budding twentieth century. Griffith himself was a descendant of a Confederate officer and, likely, had few objections to the content of this film. The film's release, way back when in 1915, resulted in controversy and protests by the NAACP and other civil rights groups. Thus, in truth, this film has never had any chance of being remotely liked by me because its racist content would overshadow any other notable element of its existence. I tell you, therefore, gentle reader, that the highest personal rating from my end that I planned to allow this film was a 6.5, between cute/mediocre and shaky/entertaining, which is kind of the threshold I use to evaluate the boundary between a film's artistic merit and its entertainment value. If the film were artistically mediocre or worse, the rating would decrease.
So, the question remains, if the film contains racist content, how did it come to be an AFI movie? While I can't answer that question definitively, I can guess that, in 1997, the Institute wanted to acknowledge this film because it, literally, changed the face of cinema. It improved upon and employed movie-making techniques that hadn't been used by anyone, including Griffith himself, prior to that point. It was immensely popular, viewed by millions of Americans and has been dubbed cinema's first "blockbuster." And, when ignoring the racist parts of the film (which is hard but can be done to some extent), the story is actually quite epic, even romantic. In fact, I'm inclined to rate the film a 6.5 for its movie-making technique alone.
The story spans three hours. The images trace the racist propaganda movement from slavery to post-Reconstruction. The first part of the movie focuses on two families at its core, a Southern family called the Camerons with its two parents and five children (three boys, two girls) and a Northern family, including an abolitionist and eventual Reconstructionist named Austin Stoneman (who was based on an actual Reconstruction leader), his daughter (Lillian Gish), his son, and his compatriots. The first part of the film shows how the Camerons enjoy their antebellum life with their "happy" slaves (who are predominantly white actors in black face). The Northern son is friends with the sons of the Camerons and comes to visit them, and through this man, the middle Cameron boy finds out about the sister and falls for her photograph. The abolition movement gains steam, however, and the film then depicts the events of the Civil War, and, in this part of the film, the message remains quite neutral, focusing more on the societal impact of war and the emotional division between brothers and friends. The three Cameron sons fight for the Confederacy, but only the middle son survives, and he ultimately meets Lillian Gish's character in a recovery hospital in Washington DC. They fall in love. Lincoln emancipates the slaves, Lee eventually surrenders to Grant, and Lincoln is assassinated. All of this, aside from the depictions of slaves and their eventual involvement in the civil war, is filmed with great resourcefulness and attention, given the fact that directors often only had one wind-up movie camera to work with. Griffith exacted care in photographing wide, panoramic scenes of battle and used different color camera gels to create moods, such as red for battle and white for surreality, that marked the first studies in cinematography. The musical soundtrack, the only sound for the film, featured various classical pieces from the Civil War and more contemporary eras. The costumes, at least of the Camerons and the Stonemans, were inaccurate but charming, and the actors seemed realistic and even devoid of some of the melodrama that characterizes many silent films.
The second half of the film is where the entire thing relaxes into a category of technical historical landmark rather than a socially relevant, culturally important, or even great film. Griffith depicted post-Reconstruction as the fantasy nightmare of the racist, where freed blacks evolve from being sold on promises of forty acres and a mule and actually gain political power, covet white women, assume the aristocracy (de-gentrifying the Southern white), and harass the white citizenry. Black women are portrayed as manipulative connivers, black men are portrayed as animalistic characters consumed by lust, and any mixed race character is depicted as the worst of the lot, scheming to hold power in every area of society and politics. When the youngest Cameron sister falls off a cliff and dies after being pursued by a black man who wishes to marry her (or maybe worse), the middle Cameron son, who sees some black children playing in white bed sheets, hatches an idea: why not dress up in white hoods and, on horseback, take back the South their own way? Of course, the film glosses over any truly violent and, frankly, more accurate images, such as lynching and burning crosses, but the point the viewer is supposed to understand is that, with the rising threat of the "minority white" (words actually used in the cutouts), there was no choice but to stage another rebellion, one that the North and South can get behind together, through the work of the Klan, who are given the wash of heroes. In fact, the Lillian Gish character, formerly a staunch abolitionist and supporter of equality, "comes around" after her life is threatened by rioting black officers; her honor is threatened by the "mulatto" named Lynch, Stoneman's protégé, who has designs on marrying her; and after the Klan, including her former lover, comes in riding on horseback – the white knight scenario – and saves her and her father.
The fact is, it's hard to view a film like The Birth of a Nation as a truly great film. A film can be innovative and significant to the evolution of cinema without being called "great." I don't think innovation itself automatically makes the whole project great; they are not overlapping in their definitions technically, and I don't see how one can hold The Birth of a Nation up as one of the greatest films ever. It's fair to call it a pinnacle in the evolution of film, but its questionable content, half of which is based on inaccuracy, fear, and hatred would seem, to me, to knock it down a few pegs from any greatness pedestal. The best-filmed scene in it was the assassination of Lincoln, which was accurately taken from historical accounts and paintings; was surprisingly gruesome and tense, even though I knew it was coming; and which had nothing to do with its racist message. Actually, the film was surprisingly sympathetic to Lincoln.
I think the AFI realized, somewhere along the line, that technical achievement and greatness do not necessarily co-exist when it created the Revised list. On the anniversary list in 2007, the AFI dropped this film and instead acknowledged Griffith by including his Intolerance film, which he made, incidentally, in answer to the controversy surrounding The Birth of a Nation. I don't know if it was capitulation on their part or if, logically, the AFI arrived at the same conclusion I have: that a film is not necessarily great on technical and/or artistic merit alone, that informed this decision.
In any event, and since the irony is not lost on me that I've watched this film on the very weekend preceding Martin Luther King Day and the inauguration of America's first black president, I'm proud of myself that I made it through the film without shutting it off in total disgust. After all, it's always good to have information about the enemy, and it's good to remember how far we've come, and how jarring certain images can be, and how no one benefits from hatred and ignorance. As time passes, perhaps the images of this film will be regarded merely as a quaint chapter in history, a turning point in nascent cinema. In the meantime, I'll give it the 6.5 for its technical achievement, which is anything but mediocre but far from a masterpiece, and it won't pass the test for obvious reasons. The Birth of a Nation has its place in American film history, but it has no place on the AFI list or in my movie collection.