This blog entry is part of my "movie year countdown round #2". Read more about that here.
The Birth of a Nation
This is the one. The icon of epic of the American silent film. Probably the oldest feature film to still be seen on "greatest of all time" movie list. Controversial in it's greatness and innovation of filmmaking vs. its rather racist sentiments and portrayals.
It's long, over three hours. And it's really split into two parts. The first part did not seem overly controversial as what I was expecting. It was also probably the more boring of the two parts as well. Surprising since I think this part has more actual war scenes in it.
The second part is the "reconstruction" and here is where the racist portrayals come in. A scene of black people who have been elected into congress eating chicken and watermelon during session and sitting there with their shoes off. That was from this movie wasn't it?? I hope I'm not getting it mixed up with anything I saw subsequently.
I can't remember which part it was in, but the most interesting and exciting part of the movie is definitely the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Most people have seen what the Ford theatre looks like if they haven't already visited it (I have). You know what's going to happen, but because of that it's all the more tense. No matter what your feelings on anything else surrounding the film, it should be seen for this scene.
The sight of Caucasian actors playing African American actors in blackface would be a bit jarring for most people in our current culture in itself I'm sure, but what makes it even more jarring is that there are several actors in this film who actually are African American. So to see the blackface actors playing amongst them is especially strange.
It was kind of interesting to see how the KKK began and what some people's image of the reconstruction period was like. I wasn't there, so I don't really know. I'm sure there were certainly a lot of people who felt as though black carpetbaggers coming down south were evil people doing some amoral things. And perhaps they were sometimes. Obviously I'm not condoning any racism, but it's important to kind of understand how racism begins and operates if we are going to be able to deal with it.
Rating: 8/10