"A plea for the art of the motion picture"

Rating: 7/10 (29 March 2015)

Third time I've seen this racist film in forty years; that's probably mysteriously enough to make me a racist to people in the antiracist industry. That's also probably enough times for me to see it too – never again! A century on and this film still has the power to divide opinion and even shock some sensitive souls and I even guarantee that less people in this lovely world have been shocked by Salo or A Serbian Film than by this. Those two examples of vile obscenity are probably blithely watched by the world's antiracists without any qualms, and they would likely defend to the death the rights of the violent perverts who made them, but not this one. The Prophet may be fervently insulted by present-day other-believers in the Name of Free Speech, but a silent film made by racists in a previous civilisation almost has the power to send millions of selective-egalitarians into paroxysms. Where are all the antiracists whenever there's a genocide going off, too busy complaining about images and words which don't suit them?
We all know what this is about: The American Civil War is fought at first for the Union then for Emancipation, the North wins, the South loses; Southern Negroes are turned from being absolute slaves fighting for freedom to being US wage-slaves fighting for jobs, which is a much cheaper option for colour-blind capitalism. The film itself is competent and cogent with excellent direction and photography for the time, and the first part is fairly straightforward. The contentious part is the Reconstruction, in which several Liberties were taken by the author and acquiesced to by the producers. All very unnecessary and nasty! The message appealed to a vast white market at the time, a market that still exists - although I very much doubt any of those many supremacist Chelsea fans on the French train barring entrance to a single black man recently had even heard of this film or the Ku Klux Klan! The actual reconstruction was a gruesomely complicated affair and not easy to glamourise by Hollywood, although its overall image of the South certainly was – I always found the apparently acceptable Gone With The Wind just as racist as this only glossier. But as for that so-called wonderful comedy Blazing Saddles, which black people tend to appreciate more than white - so much for Time healing all wounds!
I'm sure there were many vindictive Northerners and ex-slaves back then just as I'm sure there are many vindictive present-day antiracists; not only racists have agendas. Griffiths "may not have feared censorship" and lamely disclaimed on the intertitles that the picture was "not meant to reflect on any race or people of today" and afterwards came up with a movie with the scope of Intolerance as a possible atonement but will this continue to be remembered by the current crop of egalitarians. Will copies of this nasty yet revered fiction film be allowed to exist outside of the Library Of Congress in another century's time? It's interesting tripe - I simply don't see it as either enriching or enhancing in any way but refuse to worry about it or advise anyone else to be worried by it.