Controversial, politically incorrect, but quite engaging, technically brilliant and striking in its day.

Rating: 7/10 (22 January 2020)

This film was and will always be controversial, as the American Civil War is today. It is difficult to have a neutral analysis of the conflict and the period of reconstruction that followed, and I am not going to be the one who has not even studied US history to make this analysis. Nor did I read Thomas Dixon's "The Clansman" to find out if the film is fair in its adaptation to the screen and if the book shares the political and social vision that the film expresses. The film is divided into two parts. The first, quite consensual, follows the Civil War until Lincoln's death. The second part follows the following years and the first movements of the Ku Klux Klan.
Of course, the film is partial and is not politically correct ... expresses an opinion about the conflict and the years that followed, claiming that there were political mistakes and that too much power was given to blacks, that in a sense freedom was confused with permissiveness and that values, mentality and pride of the southern white class were little taken into account by Union policies. The birth of the Ku Klux Klan, in turn, is portrayed as a consequence, a reaction of a slice of southern white society that felt threatened by new order of things. This is what the film supports, I don't know if it was so.
In the film's script, two families portray the divided country: on the one hand the Stonemans, with a strong political influence in Washington, and on the other the Cameron, who own a plantation in South Carolina. The families have a friendly relationship, and these ties they are not broken by war. Proof of this is mutual assistance on the battlefield. Another interesting detail is to see how Lincoln, despite being the leader of the winning faction, was portrayed as someone very respected by southerners. Each family suffers losses and dangers during the conflict but it is still at war that Ben Cameron falls in love with Elsie Stoneman. In the second part of the film, Ben is an increasingly dark and worried man, and he is the one who founds the KKK to protect those he sees exposed to the abuses of the newly freed blacks. Some scenes are strong, like the attempted rape of Ben Cameron's younger sister, which ends in the worst way and is easily one of the most dramatic moments in the film. In a way, the little girl was the portrait of innocence in this film, and dies almost like a martyr.
Technically, the film is extraordinary. Whether you like the story told or not, it was a milestone in cinema with several important technical advances for art. The battles of the war are reconstructed with great realism. The cinematography and filming were particularly brilliant, as well as the historical reconstruction, done with great realism and rigor both in the costumes and the sets. Hundreds of costumes dressed up were part of this filming, which must have been an effort and marked the beginning of cinema as an entertainment industry. The music that accompanies the entire film is marked by diverse leitmotives, which were extracted from the nationalist and confederate national anthems, as well as from several well-known melodies of classical music.