Through The Shadow Of Racism

Rating: 7/10 (4 May 2006)

DW Grifith's Masterpiece of film is amazing because it was 1915 when it was done. 1915 is the era of shaky cameras and cut up films & scenes in many films which made little or no use of modern film making techniques as of yet. In this way, this film is brilliant for it's time but today's standards make it average now. I expected over the top racism & received it while viewing this film. You have to put that racism into this frame, you are warned about "dark truth" by the subtitles early in this film. Indeed there are many dark sequences. As for how accurate the film is, it was not Northern Blacks who were the problem in the South after the Civel War 50 years earlier. It was the Northern & Southern Whites who were Carpet Baggers & who used Southern Blacks as puppets to continue the status quo in the South. Northern Blacks stayed in the North after the war as they were more good jobs in Northern factories. The South had few jobs after the war. The term Sharecropper was created in this era. In spite of all the blood spilled in this war, our country had still not grown up & matured to accept blacks in white society, even in the North.
You have to consider though that these views put in the film are from stories passed down from Grand Parents to others by the time this film was made. Stories passed from generation to generation do get embellished to the point where reality is lost & that is what happens with the depiction of racism in this film. Making the KKK into heroes is outrageous to the modern generations of Americans, but the modern KKK re-formed after this film actually bears no resemblance to the KKK first formed in the South. The first KKK fought Carpet Bagging Whites as well as fighting blacks as another hated invader. The real indication of this is the battle scenes in the Civil War. You will note that the more historically accurate Confederate battle flags are shown. The Red "Stars & Bars" which are now used are the Historic Revisionist / the 1950's modern KKK's way of expressing disdain to black people. Ironically these modern flags are used (acutally abused) by Civil War Re-enactment Confederates (including Ted Turner's "Gettysburg".
This film shows the clan riding in day light. That was never done. This film is rife with problems in total but worth watching because a master film maker rose above 1915 to produce an important film. If nothing else, this film is valuable in defining what racial stereotypes were & should never be again. That is why it is important, & it will continue to be an important film is because of history. We always get reminded of these stereotypes by our modern main stream news media which today is much more racist than most of the American people they report too.
Age has long worn out a lot of it's artistic beauty & accomplishment. It would be interesting to see modern Hollywood try to re-make this film but I doubt that any of the modern film makers have the guts to do that.
We appear to be entering an era where we might be destined to relive racism. Electing a Black President because he is black is a big mistake. The President's own brother has written a book saying the black President is racist- against whites. That takes our country back to this movie.