A Tale of Two Movies

Rating: 6/10 (31 October 2005)

D.W. Griffith has made two movies and put them on the same set of reels. The first half of the movie depicts antebellum south and the Civil War. The second half of the movie depicts the reconstruction of the south after the civil war. But they are more than just halves of the movie; they are really two different movies. The first part is a sincere attempt to recreate the factual events of the Civil War as told through the eyes of the Stonemans and the Camerons. The second part is just as sincere, but the focus is on the myths and emotions of the south after the civil war.
The first half of the film tracks orthodox history so closely (and there are those "AN HISTORICAL FACISIMILIE" notes on some of the slides) that it is easy to think the rest is correct history, too. Maybe that was what D.W. Griffith was trying to achieve. In any case, the real history of the second part is the true history of the fears and mythology of the white south after the war. They often did look on blacks as children who needed to be cared for to keep them from hurting themselves. They did think slavery was good for the blacks. They did think that a black man wanted nothing more badly than to live in a nice white mansion and to have a white wife. The second half of the film doesn't portray the history of events so much as the history of emotions.
Is this an outdated movie? Look at the reaction of the white establishment to popular black entertainers. They are outraged by videos on MTV or BET of strong black men who have money and sexual virility. Why is that? I think some of that outrage is the continuing echoes of the white fears of black sexuality so strongly brought out in this movie. Margaret Cameron's father Dr. Cameron is prepared to kill her before the blacks get her. Flora Cameron jumps to her death rather than be raped by a black man. The mulattoes, the products of the sexual unions Whites feared the most are depicted as the worst in the film -- from Austin Stoneman's mulatto maid who is sexually after him to the uncomfortably named Silas Lynch who is the mulatto who runs the town after the blacks take over.
Is this a racist movie? Of course, but I really didn't have any problem with the racism in the plot of the movie. It was easy to understand and absorb -- like reading a speech by Jefferson Davis in a history book. The racism that kept bugging me when I was watching the movie was the racism in Hollywood itself. All of the black and mulatto characters that get any significant amount of screen time are all white actors in blackface. When there were actually blacks used, it was only as extras -- such as when they show slaves picking cotton.
Cinematic skill - Griffith often uses some kind of mask to block out distracting edges of the picture or to frame a portrait picture of the actor. It has the effect of focusing your attention where he wants you to look. It makes for a tighter shot and probably was a substitute for a close-up lens. I assume there were no moving zoom lenses, but Griffith makes up for that by using a mask that can widen or shrink to give a zoom in or zoom out effect.