The End of Griffith

Film: Orphans of the Storm
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

Since I started getting into the silents with intent a few weeks ago, D.W. Griffith has been something of my nemesis. While innovative and important in the annals of film, there’s something about his films that’s sort of like biting down on a piece of tinfoil. When the film doesn’t involve outright racism, it tends to involve insane amounts of melodrama and thick-headedness. So it’s with some relish that I sat down with the fifth and final Griffith film--Orphans of the Storm. If nothing else, this painful chapter of my life will be behind me and I can move on to directors who may be less important in terms of cinematic language but are far more enjoyable to watch.

True to form, Orphans of the Storm contains all of the typical tropes I have come to expect from D.W. Griffith. It seems that his favorite emotion is outrage just as his favorite leading lady is the irrepressibly cute Lillian Gish. While Griffith avoids the racism that seems inherent in so many of his stories with this one, he can’t stop his politics from coming through and dominating every aspect of this story.

As with the bulk of Intolerance, this film is a costume drama, this time set in the years prior to and during the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. A man in Paris goes to lay his daughter Henriette at the door of Notre Dame since he can no longer afford to feed her. Instead, he finds another foundling and brings her home. This is Louise, who is adopted into the family in no small part because of the money she is found with.

The two grow up and lose their parents to a plague. This same plague renders Louise (Dorothy Gish) blind. Henriette (Lillian Gish) vows to care for her. The two journey to Paris with the hope of a cure for Louise, who must be persuaded to go by a promise from Henriette that she will not leave her or marry until a cure is discovered for Louise’s blindness.

Along the way, they encounter the decadent aristocrat, the Marquis de Praille (Morgan Wallace). He gets a look at the sexy Herniette and demands that his manservant capture her and bring her back to a party. He does so, abandoning the poor Louise to her fate where she is picked up by a group of tramps who use her blindness to garner more money from passersby.

In the meanwhile, Henriette is rescued by Chevalier de Vaudrey (Joseph Schildkraut), a kindhearted noble who frequently takes pity on the poor and acts as a friend to those in need. The two quickly fall for each other, but Henriette has made her promise, and now Louise is missing.

All of this gets tied up into the French Revolution. Old grudges against the nobility come back to haunt everyone. Henriette and Louise find each other, lose each other, and find each other again. De Vaudrey is arrested simply for being a nobleman, and Henriette is arrested with him; both are sentenced to pay a visit to Madame Guillotine, sentenced by the wicked Jacques Forget-Not (Leslie King) with the approval of the equally wicked Robespierre (Sidney Herbert). Only the oratory skills of Danton (Monte Blue) and some mechanical problems with the guillotine can save everyone now. And what about Louise’s eyesight?

This is high melodrama at its silent finest, and it plays fast and loose with history, ideas of justice and nobility, and simple fact. Danton, Robespierre, and Louis XVI are depicted as old, weathered men when not a one of them lived past 40 in real life. It’s also quite interesting to see Robespierre considered a Bolshevik.

I will say this—based on Griffith movies I have already seen, there’s a surprising amount of tension at the end. His movies have both happy and unhappy endings, so there’s some real tension in the moments leading up to Henriette’s walk up the scaffold to the guillotine.

As a costume drama, this works pretty well if only because the costumes and sets are really interesting to look at. It’s interesting to see that Griffith manages to hit his anti-Bolshevik stride by commenting that real freedom wouldn’t come to France until after Robespierre was himself guillotined, glossing over the fact that his savior character Danton was guillotined on Robespierre’s order first. Ah, Hollywood—is there no history that you can’t screw with to get the desired ending and message?

So where does it rank in terms of Griffith? It’s certainly more watchable than Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, and Way Down East. It spins in the same circle as Broken Blossoms. It’s far less racism-driven, but it’s also far more overblown.

Why to watch Orphans of the Storm: All the joys of the Reign of Terror.
Why not to watch: For all its pomp and bombast…it’s still Griffith.

Way, Way, Way Down

Film: Way Down East
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.


I took a gander at another film by D.W. Griffith, and his fourth in the first eight films on The List. The film in question is Way Down East, a domestic drama that I think is fairly safe from ever being remade based on the characters and the situation. It’s not one that works well in today’s world. We start with young Anna (Lillian Gish), a poor country girl sent to the city to visit her wealthier relations.

It is here that Anna meets Lennox Sanderson (Lowell Sherman). Sanderson is a rake, and a user of women. Interested only in his own pleasure, Sanderson woos the young woman, perhaps not really knowing that she’s merely a poor relative and not someone who comes from money herself. Regardless, Sanderson convinces Anna to marry him in secret, allowing him to continue using women as he wishes, but also giving him the pleasure and company of Anna’s bed. Naturally, Anna gets pregnant, which is the cue for Sanderson to admit the marriage was a sham and abandon her and her infant, Trust. When Trust dies (and yes, you should read that as “trust” dying as well), the now abandoned and alone Anna is forced to fend for herself. She does so by making her way to the Bartlett estate and begging for a job.

Here she meets David Bartlett (Richard Barthelmess), the son of the squire (Burr McIntosh). David quickly becomes enamored of the pretty Anna, but she keeps her distance thanks to her unusual past. Things come to a head when Lennox shows up in the area sniffing around the squire’s niece Kate and discovers his abandoned “wife” in the area.

And it’s here that I will confer with fellow 1001 blogger Squish Lessard. In his review of this film, he decries the melodrama, which is ample. I’m not personally adverse to melodrama when it works (Night of the Hunter), but when it doesn’t work, it really doesn’t work. Way Down East suffers from many of the same problems that comedies have had since comedies began. If someone—anyone—would just say something, all of the problems get resolved instantly. A movie that trades on the idea that everyone has to act like a complete idiot is a movie that has failed in the plot department. One person making a single comment cuts this plot off at the knees and cuts the last act completely.

See, our poor little Anna is branded as a harlot and a loose woman because she’s a) unmarried and b) has had a child. Except that she got married, and sex and having kids are a part of being married. She’s married, f’cryin’ out loud! The fact that she isn’t really married is because Lennox is a bastard, not because she’s wanton—he lied to her. All she has to do is tell someone and produce the damned certificate of marriage, or find a witness, and her good name is restored and Lennox Sanderson is viewed for the abandoning woman-user that he is. But no, it’s all to the plot that Anna must remain silently suffering this agony and these terrible accusations about her person and character. If she had a single ounce of backbone, our movie ends at the ninety minute-or-so mark. But instead of suing the bastard for breach of contract and a host of other legal niceties, she instead runs out on an ice floe in an effort to destroy herself (and it’s worth noting that Lillian Gish suffered for the rest of her life from complications involving the ice floe garbage).

No movie should depend on the plot device of everyone involved being a damned idiot, but that’s what we get from Griffith here. People are either mean-stupid or noble-stupid. Enjoying this movie means enjoying the company of really stupid people. More than that, they are a people with a very strange morality. It’s such a complete throwback to dark, dark days when the woman who is lied to and abused is held responsible. Essentially, Anna is a pariah not because she had a child out of marriage, but because she allowed herself to be lied to, and when she finally does reveal the complete truth behind her terrible secret, it's too little, too late. Moreover, the moral stance of the bulk of the cast is coming from a collection of people who would like to see David and Kate get married…and they’re cousins.

Compounding on this particular frustration is Griffith’s penchant for playing morality boss in a good number of his title cards. While I’m certain his intent was to be moral, the reality is that he comes off as pedantic.

The real shame here, though, is that Way Down East has all of the makings of a great screwball comedy. Instead, Griffith goes for doom, gloom, and message, message, message. Film was still in its infancy in 1920, and Griffith shows it here because he delivers the message of the film with his usual subtlety—that of a cricket bat applied to the temple. I felt beaten down by this film rather than what I assume was the intended uplift of the ending.

The other problem with making this into a comedy is that Griffith really isn’t funny. He has several comic relief characters here, and none of them are the least bit comic, or offer any relief. Furthermore, a great deal of the trouble in this film is caused by town busybody Martha (an uncredited Vivia Ogden), who ends up married to the man who has pursued her for a couple decades. Why the hell would anyone want such a nasty, evil-faced, self-important bint to get anything like a happy ending? Only in Griffith-land.

One more Griffith film to go. Thank God.

Why to watch Way Down East: Classic silent drama and the lovely Lillian Gish.
Why not to watch: The plot could be solved half way through with a single sentence.

Outsiders Looking In

Films: Broken Blossoms, The Elephant Man
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

Race—differences between races, the similarities, problems of, dealing with, etc.—is almost certainly one of the most filmed major themes since film began. It’s impossible at times to separate race from character, or race from plot. This is as true of films being made today as it was of films made during the silent era. The attitudes of the rank and file have changed with regard to race in the main, and generally for the positive, but that doesn’t mean that race problems have vanished, or that there is nothing more to be said.

D.W. Griffith seemed to return to concepts of race again and again, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Films like Birth of a Nation deal with ideas of racial superiority and stereotype while others, like Intolerance touch less on race specifically but deal more with a general, well, intolerance. Broken Blossoms falls somewhere in between these two extremes of favoring ideas of racial superiority and supporting ideas of tolerance and equality.

What this means is that I think it is evident that Griffith’s sympathies in this film are with our Chinese leading man, Cheng Huan (Richard Barthelmess). Cheng is depicted initially as an idealist and a pacifist who becomes dissolute due to opium addiction, but Griffith gives him a chance to redeem himself throughout the film, and Cheng jumps at the chance he is offered. In other words, Cheng Huan is shown as a human with failings, but who is at his core a good man willing and ready to do the right thing.

To really understand the depth of Griffith’s sympathy for Cheng, it’s important to bring in the character of Lucy Burrows (Lillian Gish). Lucy is a poor little teenager who is regularly beaten by her father, prizefighter Battling Burrows (Donald Crisp). He beats her to the edge of death before she passes out in Cheng’s store. Cheng cares for her, dressing her in silk and treating her well for the first time in her life. It’s evident here, and in fact before this point that Cheng loves the girl. However, even now, with her life in his hands, he refuses to take advantage of his position, treating her instead with concern, compassion, and kindness. Griffith wants us to like Cheng. He wants us to root for Cheng. He wants us to want Lucy to fall for Cheng despite his foreignness (less of a deal now, but a huge deal in 1919). That this is his goal could not be more evident had it been written on a title card.

Perhaps to help our sympathies, or to create his own, Lucy’s life is depicted as being so terrible that she is forced to physically move her mouth with her fingers to bring a smile to her face when her brutish father demands it. It’s melodrama of the highest order at this point, but again, it’s important to look at this through the eyes of its intended post-World War I audience rather than today’s. Lillian Gish is a cutie (which is to be expected—she has to engage our sympathies, after all), and seeing her physical, emotional, and spiritual degradation at the hand of this thug is affecting, no matter how contrived. “Certainly,” thinks the 1919 audience, “Anything is better than this—even the Chinese man.”

And this is where the racism seems to really rear its ugly head. Throughout the film, Cheng is referred to in title cards as the “Yellow Man,” a phrase that would cause mass protests today. In fact, at one point, once his descent into opium addiction begins, Cheng is referred to as another “Chink shopkeeper,” a racial slur that may have once been common parlance but in today’s world is one of the most unacceptable.

It’s true that most of the racial bashing here comes not from the title cards, but from the characters we are supposed to dislike. As Lucy recovers from her beating from accidentally spilling food on Battling Burrows, he reacts not because Lucy has taken up with a man, but because she is being cared for by a Chinese man. What is perhaps more shocking is Lucy calling him “Chinky” as a term of affection, and recoiling from him when he dares get physically close to her.

It’s almost as if this film is the public beginning of White Guilt. Griffith wants us to want Cheng to come out victorious, but Griffith himself can’t see Cheng as a man, but only as a subset of men. He’s not quite the worth of a white man—he’s always something different and to a great extent lesser. Cheng’s greatest fault is not so much his opium addiction, but that he’s Chinese rather than white.

Ultimately, Broken Blossoms is a soap opera, a sensation only enhanced by the soundtrack that runs through much of the version I watched. That it tells a bittersweet story and features a hero who is not white is noteworthy in 1919. That the inherent racism of the time still bleeds through is perhaps inevitable. Maybe…maybe it’s enough that at least Griffith was trying to overcome what had been pounded into him in a lifetime of living in society that viewed anyone not of European stock as lesser, inferior, or sub-human. Is it his fault he didn’t get all the way there? But could there be better proof of this truth than the fact that a Chinese man is played by a Caucasian actor?

As a last note, this contains some of the funniest boxing I have ever seen. I realize it’s not meant to be comic, but it really, really is.

The idea of racial equality has undergone a number of changes in this country and much of the world since Broken Blossoms was filmed. In other ways, society has perhaps changed less. David Lynch’s The Elephant Man is a biopic of the life of John Merrick, whose celebrated skeleton Michael Jackson once wanted to purchase. Much of the story comes from the journal of Frederick Treves, played here by Anthony Hopkins.

On its surface, this is the story of a badly deformed man suffering from a combination of medical conditions that combined to create such deformities that had never been seen before. Merrick, whose real first name was Joseph, has been diagnosed in the years after his death as having a combination of neurofibromatosis and proteus syndrome (you can look these up on your own). His body was covered in huge benign tumors of such size that he was forced to sleep sitting up lest he risk suffocating. In practical terms for this film, it meant that the great John Hurt had to spend seven hours per day in the makeup chair and could only work on alternate days.

What this truly is, of course, is a story of human dignity. Merrick’s extensive deformities do not change the fact that underneath it all he is a man. We don’t start there, though. Initially, Merrick is a sideshow attraction, a freak of nature, and there is no indication that there is anything at all beneath that massive head of his. His “owner,” Mr. Bytes (Freddie Jones) takes care of him, but not very well, and Merrick is evidently subject to a series of regular beatings administered by Bytes’s walking stick. Treves takes a special interest in Merrick, showing his deformities to the medical community, and then coming to his rescue after a particularly severe beating from Bytes. He brings him into the hospital and attempts to communicate with him.

It’s not until Merrick is introduced to hospital official Carr Gomm (John Gielgud) that we discover that he has a mind underneath his deformed skull. Merrick is actually a gentle creature, a man of fine sensibilities and refinement. This is contrasted in the evenings when a riotous porter (Michael Elphick) brings his drunken cronies around to gawk at the man.

What’s actually quite lovely here is the progression of the people at the hospital, where Merrick is eventually allowed to stay permanently. Initially, he is a figure of terror due to his massive disfigurements. Eventually, the people come to accept him, and eventually like him, particularly Carr Gomm and the nurse Mothershead (Wendy Hiller). A visit from a famous stage actress named Mrs. Kendal (Anne Bancroft) provides John with a source of dreams, a sense of himself, and a desire to be seen as a man.

The Elephant Man works frequently as melodrama. Merrick is so terrible in appearance and so gentle in nature that it’s almost too much. Those who are despicable—Bytes, the porter—are so nasty as to be missing only the pencil-thin curly mustache and Snidely Whiplash sneer. And yet it is effective here. Hurt’s performance is one of the great ones of his career. He plays Merrick with a real sensitivity and pathos.

The film is shot in a crisp black-and-white, and this does a great deal for the film. It has been reported that Lynch decided against color because the makeup effects looked appalling in color, and that may or may not be true. What is true is that the film is beautiful in black-and-white, and I can’t imagine it in color.

It’s worth noting that The Elephant Man lost every Oscar it was nominated for. The one award it was not nominated for was for makeup effects. There were many who believed that the film deserved a special award, because there was no regular category at that time for makeup. The film went unrewarded—a huge oversight in my opinion—but the next year, a category for makeup effects was added.

What’s the final analysis here? Bluntly, it should have won something. Despite the obvious melodrama and the overhyped emotional content, this is a beautiful film and a touching one. Merrick is a tragic figure, and beautiful despite his deformities, perhaps because of them. John Hurt has never been better, and considering the roles he’s had and the films he’s been in, that’s saying quite a lot. You’re doing yourself a disservice not seeing this film. I wish I had seen it before tonight.

Why to watch Broken Blossoms: A sad little story, more touching and intimate than might be expected from Griffith’s earlier bombast.
Why not to watch: The racism still bleeds through.

Why to watch The Elephant Man: Probably David Lynch’s most coherent and understandable film.
Why not to watch: Excessive sentimentality.

Super Silent Saturday

Films: Intolerance, The Thief of Bagdad
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

When D.W. Griffith filmed The Birth of a Nation, he simultaneously invented modern film and created a storm of controversy. In an effort to soften that criticism, he produced Intolerance, the biggest, longest, and most expensive film ever created, at least for its time. Intolerance weaves four stories of intolerant behavior—three from history and one from Griffith’s present day—to show the terrible damage cause by judging others harshly and, well, being intolerant. Should you sit down with this one, be prepared to be hammered with the world “intolerance” virtually every time the story switches from one era to the next.

What Griffith does, rather than run each story through from start to finish, is skip back and forth between the four, spending the most time in the present day and in the oldest story, which takes place in ancient Babylon. It’s likely that the first story had the most interest for people of the time and it’s absolutely true that the Babylonian story, with its massive sets, huge crop of extras, and live freakin’ elephants was the most expensive, and he wanted the most bang for his buck there. What this means is that each story essentially builds to a climax at the same time and resolves at the same time.

The four stories are:
Babylon, the siege of the city by Cyrus, aided and abetted by the disgruntled priest of Bel-Marduk, upset that worship has turned to Ishtar instead of his god.
Judea, Christ against the Pharisees and Christ’s eventual crucifixion.
France, and the persecution and destruction of the Huguenots under Catherine de Medici and Charles IX.
And Modern, unrest, strikes, and temperance, leading to moral outrage from moneyed individuals who hold themselves superior to the working class.

The three historical stories all show the terrible consequences of what can happen because of intolerant behavior, and links between the stories come in the form of Lillian Gish acting as a sort of universal mother rocking a cradle, undoubtedly the easiest payday she ever scored.

While this does contain four distinct stories, only two have any real meat on them. The Christ story is almost non-existent to the point where it becomes difficult to recall anything from it. The Pharisees hold themselves above the common masses of the people, Christ here is depicted as the sort of ultimately tolerant individual he was, and he is crucified for defying the wisdom and influence of his elders. Perhaps it’s safe to say that Griffith gave the story so little traction here because it was (and is) such a familiar story to his viewers. Similarly, the French story holds little more than Catholics getting pissed off and killing scads of Huguenots, and disrupting a wedding.

The modern story concerns the destruction caused by the alleged good intentions of reformers, who actually do more to destroy people, tear apart families, and create crime than perform any positive service. This is shown by giving us the story of people who, through circumstances, are treated as emblematic of the problem in the eyes of the reformers, but who are essentially innocent of the crimes of which they are convicted. The intolerance of the reformers blinds them to anything but the necessity of getting their reforms across, whatever the cost, and no matter who is ground down in the wheels of their justice.

The big story, with the cast of thousands and the massive sets, is the Babylonian story, which probably could have (and perhaps should have) been the entire film. Here, religious intolerance leads to the complete destruction of Babylon, and lives are ground down under the wheels of an onrushing army, all because a priest was dissatisfied with the fact that his ruler and the people had turned away from his god.

In this story we get some of the most magnificent battle sequences ever filmed. The sets here are tremendous, and the cast is massive. Thousands of people throw rocks, get hit by arrows, and move massive siege towers into place against huge walls created for the film. There are some really fine bits here, with towers being knocked over and a couple of decapitations that certainly would have shocked people 100 years ago (although through modern eyes, the trick is an obvious one).

What’s really noteworthy here is that again, Griffith did things that no one had done before. We have huge crane shots over Babylon, crane shots with moving cameras that really look like modern camera work. And, even today, 95 years later, the sets are still staggering. It’s the spectacle that makes this worth watching.

What’s difficult for the modern viewer is the typical overacting and overreaction of silent film actors. The Mountain Girl, for instance, takes part in the battles in an effort to help protect her beloved Belshazzar. She launches an arrow, then points to it, and jumps up and down. Yes, you launched an arrow. Good for you. In the middle of battle at one point, she spots Belshazzar and moons over him while around her, people are dying. It’s the sort of thing that to a modern audience makes silent film difficult to take seriously. Her realization of the treachery of the Priest of Bel comes with so much eye-bulging and double taking that it becomes comic.

Doubtless Griffith wanted these characters to be iconic, which is why most of them don’t have names. The accused in the modern story is known only as “The Boy” and his wife is “The Dear One,” while the girl in the French story is called “Brown Eyes.” In general, the bad guys have names—they are specific, but our heroes are known only by what type they are.

Intolerance, for all its epic sweep and profound greatness, is a film without a time. When it was made, audiences reacted by staying away in droves, bankrupting Griffith’s production company. Today, the acting is too extreme, and everything too melodramatic to have any traction with a modern audience. This is a rough ride—watch only for study, and for the giant battle sequences. Otherwise, it’s a few hours of preaching, bad behavior, and overacting.

If you think that the actors in Intolerance overdo it, it’s only because you’ve never seen Douglas Fairbanks in The Thief of Bagdad. There isn’t a gesture here that can’t be made grander, or with a larger sweep of the arm. Seeing a dish of food he’d like, he smacks his lips and rubs his hand over his stomach from groin to chin.

Fairbanks, as might be determined from the previous paragraph, is the eponymous thief. The opening sequence shows him doing what he does. He filches purses by feigning sleep near a drinking spot, climbs walls and takes food, and steals a magic rope when its owner bows in prayer after being called by the muezzin. He also offers a speech to the clerics of Allah, saying that he looks for no reward in the next life. Instead, he takes what he wishes; this is a speech repeated a few minutes later by a Mongol prince, who has set his sights on Bagdad for his own.

To get it, he’ll try to win the hand of the Princess of Bagdad. To do so, the suitor must return with the rarest of treasures. The thief originally breaks into the palace of the Caliph of Bagdad to steal goods, but becomes so enamored of the princess that he decides that she is the true treasure. He first feigns being a prince himself, but is found out and flogged for his trouble. However, once he discovers what must be done to win the princess, he sets out on his own journey, fraught with peril, terrible monsters, and the treachery of his opponents for the princess’s hand.

At a touch longer than two-and-a-half hours, it would be nice to think that there’s more to the plot than this, but more really isn’t needed. Like the Babylonian scenes in Intolerance, the sell here is the spectacle on the screen. While the sets are huge and grand and a number of scenes have a large crop of extras, that’s not the focus. The focus is on the effects and on the talents and charm of Douglas Fairbanks.

Fairbanks is really something special. He was famous and a star back in the 1920s for the exact same reason that Jackie Chan is famous today—he looked like he could do anything, and made it look easy. In fact, while Chan often takes both a real and an apparent beating in his movies, Fairbanks does his stunts with a smile on his face. He is a tremendous acrobat, making everything he does look as simple as walking down a staircase. Naturally there were some tricks here—in one scene hidden trampolines aid his jumps, for instance. But many of these stunts were him and him alone. He moves with the natural grace of a dancer and the skill of a trained athlete. Few actors in history have had this natural gift, and fewer still used them so well and to such good effect.

As far as the special effects, it can be difficult to judge in this modern world of jaded viewers and films like Avatar and Inception. Still, for their time, they are ahead of the game, and while there’s no shock of how these effects were pulled off, several of them still look great and still work. What are the effects? Well, there’s a giant lizard monster, a bat creature, an undersea expedition complete with giant deep sea spider, and a winged horse that really looks great. The magic carpet is a nice effect, too. They all pale to the soldiers who appear from clouds of smoke, though. All in all, it’s impressive enough that it must have been cause for great discussion 85 years ago, and today is still good enough to be worth noting.

Sure, this film is overacted and melodramatic. And? It’s also a great deal of fun, filled with adventure and entertainment. If Douglas Fairbanks makes too much show of everything he does, who really cares? This is really the first non-comedy silent film I can say I have truly been entertained by, and that’s worth the price of admission.

Why to watch Intolerance: It’s grand in a way few films have ever been.
Why not to watch: Being hit over the head with message/message/message is never pleasant.

Why to watch The Thief of Bagdad: Stunts you won’t believe aren’t trick photography, and some of the greatest early effects ever made.
Why not to watch: Crazy, crazy melodrama.

Racist Cinema

Film: The Birth of a Nation
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop

There comes a time when one must be willing to separate the art from the subject matter or the art from the artist. It happens, for instance, every time I watch a movie directed by Roman Polanski. Roman Polanski, the alleged statutory rapist must be separated from Roman Polanski, the great filmmaker of Chinatown and Repulsion. It also happens with D. W. Griffith’s first great masterpiece, The Birth of a Nation.

For me, there is no other possible way to watch this film, which is more or less a paean to the glorious days of the South when the lifestyle was fabulous for anyone white. The film yearns for those halcyon days of yore when the rich, white, benevolent plantation owners held sway, and even their slaves were happy in their servitude. Obviously, the connection here to reality is pretty tenuous at best.

And yet, that’s the film we’re given here. The South is praised in all things—the bucolic lifestyle, the traditions, the glory of the plantation system. Northerners in general are shown as slipshod, nasty, and petty while the men of the South are all gallant and noble and the women are all beautiful. Nothing here is more glorious than the flag of the Confederacy, which is covered in glory with each victory for the gallant, brave troops. Abolitionists are no better than…well, whatever you can think of (although Lincoln is thought of pretty well throughout).

And it gets worse. Since the film is based on a book called “The Clansmen,” it should come as no surprise that once the South loses that War of Northern Aggression, all hell really breaks loose in dear old Dixie. See, those terrible, terrible former slaves shouldn’t have really wanted their freedom, because all they’re really going to do is attempt to ravage the pure white women with their terrible, terrible jungle fury. Who can step in to save the day? The Klan, naturally.

Yes, the Klan. In Griffith’s masterpiece, the Klan are the good guys who seek only to avenge the terrible wrongs done to the South when those damned Yankees fought them for wanting to create their own country and for leaving the white population poor and helpless against all those rapacious black folk. It all feels so backwards—it did generally at the time it was made for many, although the film was a hit. But in this day and age, the morality of this film, the overall tenor of it feels so completely backwards and horrifying that the film is often difficult to watch. Anyone not lilywhite is nothing but a terrible, rampaging brute, little more than an animal, as are the white Northern soldiers who lead “Negro” regiments. In a battle early in the film, such a regiment destroys the town of some of the film’s main characters—looting and pillaging, destroying wantonly until the noble Confederacy rides into town to save the day and send those bad, bad men a’runnin’. In one title card, Griffith goes so far as to call the disenfranchisement of non-whites the Southerners’ “Aryan birthright.”

And so, The Birth of a Nation is unquestionably racist in the extreme. Griffith’s title cards throughout want to claim very much that the film is anti-war, and there are certainly sequences (the death of two friends, one a Confederate, the other a Yankee dying together on the battlefield, for example) drive home that point. But the real thrust of the film is that before the American Civil War, the plantation owners and Southern whites were benevolent rulers who held sway over their childlike slaves as a form of kindness. Without this oversight, says the film, the slaves would quickly destroy the land, lord their superior numbers over the white population, and continually exact revenge as well as release their rampant sexual desires for irresistible and pure white women.

Thus, the film must be separated from the art. The film itself, the actual plot and story, the characters and characterizations, the mood, and everything about it is completely reprehensible, particularly from a modern point of view. It is almost (not quite) but almost akin to blaming the Holocaust on the Jewish population of Europe. In this respect, The Birth of a Nation is a hateful, terrible film impossible to view dispassionately.

However, on the artistic side, beyond the story and the inherent racism of the film, it remains that Griffith was a master technician and a true innovator of the cinematic form. Scenes are filmed with a red filter to depict blazes around cities. He was one of the first, if not the first, to use a tracking camera for some shots. Griffith managed to blend documentary features (like the assassination of Lincoln) with a fictional narrative. He used close-up camera work to great effect.

Thus, on the level of historical importance to the growth of the film medium, there are few movies that wield this kind of impact. Griffith effectively created the film medium with this film in profound and significant ways. The film is still being studied for its effect on virtually everything that came after it.

So it’s art. Is it bad art or is it great art? That point is where people are still splitting the dog. Ultimately, which is more important—the invention and use of new and influential techniques in the cinematic medium or the reprehensible, vicious, and racist story it tells? It puts the viewer in the unique position of either denigrating one of the greatest technical achievements in early film or praising something about as politically correct as Mein Kampf.

So where do I fall? It is a great film. It’s an unpleasant, nasty film. It’s a film that will irritate and offend anyone who isn’t a skinhead. But regardless of this, its technical achievements mark it as a film that truly is worthy of study. It’s worth noting, though, that silent dramas are extremely tedious to watch (for me), and this one runs more than three hours.

Why to watch The Birth of a Nation: The most influential film for the first 30+ years of cinematic undertakings.
Why not to watch: Naked, ugly racism from stem to stern.