Technical masterpiece, vicious propaganda

Rating: 6/10 (26 May 2004)

-The Birth of a Nation- is a technical masterpiece, one of the first convincing settings of a grand epic. Through the Civil War one has a picture little more objectionable than -Gone With the Wind- , the first movie about the Civil War and its aftermath to upstage it. -Gone With the Wind- is also racist by standards of our time.
D.W. Griffith gets obvious credit for creating a convincing story line, for innovative techniques of camera work, and convincing battle scenes. If some parts of it -- especially the racial stereotypes and the mythologized history -- look hokey, then think of how much more sophisticated Americans are ninety years later, when the Ku Klux Klan is an object of ridicule even in the South.
Whatever you say about the message, you must admit that the character of "Silas Lynch" (George Siegmann, obviously a white man in blackface), is one of the most convincing villains of the screen -- a base man who achieves great power as Lieutenant Governor after the Civil War but uses it only for base ends, somewhat analogous to the "Adenoid Hynkel" character that Chaplin created in -The Great Dictator- . Likewise, "Lydia Brown" (Mary Alden, a white woman in blackface), a conniving, devious, but ignorant villainess. Are those characters mere stereotypes? Sure. They are about as realistic as the fake dye on their faces and the shoe polish hair. In 1915, most white people didn't know that.
It is not until the Reconstruction that things get objectionable. Say all that one wants about the Reconstruction governments -- they were on a whole less corrupt and more responsive to the needs of poor people in the South than any that followed until at least the 1960s, even if the poor blacks who won some elections were often ill-prepared for holding power (as if the plantation system were intended to prepare a slave for anything other than abject servitude). The only 'good' blacks are those who subordinate themselves to white people in knowledge of their 'God-ordained, lowly place'. A white do-gooder like "Austin Stoneman" (Ralph Lewis) sees nothing wrong with black power until his daughter Elsie (Lilian Gish) becomes the object of a lurid affection from "Silas Lynch". No matter what one's views on the Ku-Klux-Klan of the Reconstruction era or of later Klans, one must admit that its 'cavalry charge' is impressive.
The great paradox is that D.W. Griffith wanted an anti-war movie, but -Birth of a Nation- ends in the triumph of the Ku-Klux-Klan, a group even more violent than the cardboard villains and crazed fools that Griffith portrays. How could the final scene -- an election in which dirty tricks are played upon potential black voters -- serve a sustainable peace?
Nearly a century later, it isn't -The Birth of a Nation- that has changed; it is we Americans who have changed. America even elected Barack Obama as President.
The very survival of America depended upon the defeat of two monstrous enemies, Nazi Germany and thug Japan, for which racism was the cornerstone of the empires that their leaders sought to build. We can no longer see this gigantic epic, half brilliant and half horrific, as people might have seen it a century ago. Thank God -- and better yet, thank Thurgood Marshall, Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King, and other real heroes.