Posted on 04/11/2011 4:57:45 PM PDT by Lucius Cornelius Sulla
'History Written in Lightning' -- Woodrow Wilson.
On TCM tonight at 8PM for more than 3 hours.
Classic, controversial movie from 1915 (silent, naturally).
I’ve only seen clips. Thanks for the heads up. Is it 8 eastern?
Yes
of interest?
Great movie. I had it in a history of film class in college. The pretentious instructor got himself in a fine lather at how we were supposed to view this offensive movie. It was nice to have an easy a class instead of calc or physics for a change. That’s how the liberal arts students lived.
As for offensive, I only remember one scene where they did a fade from showing the white legislators in the Capitol to the black ones who were shown eating chicken when they faded to them. I don’t remember anything else offensive but I saw it almost 30 years ago. Yes, it was offensive seen in my, at the time, 1981’s eye but it was from 1915. So it’s hard to judge since we didn’t live at that time.
Worth watching again.
Man, I do remember how much I hated the teacher though. He couldn’t handle me finishing his final in the time it took me to read it. Man I hate liberal d-bag teachers. Still got an a. If I told him what I really thought of, “Citizen Kane” (overrated) I’m sure he would have dinged me.
Don’t feel too bad.
I have a BIL that is not only a frothing libtard, he’s the Dean of a college (will remain unnamed) that makes me want to go “Marine Corps” on his worthless ass each and every time that I see him.
The things we have to endure to keep Mama happy.
One thing for sure, Lillian Gish was cute, If only she wasn’t born nearly 120 years ago. At my age I would only want her to be at least 60 years younger, others might want it 100 years younger.
I recorded it earlier. Incidentally, it appears the villian Gus (veteran D. W. Griffith heavy, Walter Long, in some sort of blackface) was not trying to rape the white woman, but she got frightened anyway and jumped to her death.
Thanks. I’m watching it now.
It's not like it was a documentary. It was a movie.
Thanks LCS.
For those of you who are curious about this relic but don’t have a boob-tube, you can view it here: http://www.archive.org/details/dw_griffith_birth_of_a_nation
I just checked the link and it’s still good.
Griffith sure did not like Thaddeus Stevens (Stoneman). I didn’t realize that Wilson had made such a full throated endorsement of the KKK, against the Republican ‘Adventurers’. Apparently ‘extremists’ had not yet become a political term.
The scene with the black legislators is most offensive, especially when they were voting on the white black intermarriage bill, with all the black legislators staring lustfully at the white women.
‘was not trying to rape the white woman, but she got frightened anyway and jumped to her death.’
I think that scene was stolen from James F. Coopers ‘Last of the Mohicans’, where the bad guy was the Huron Indian Magua, and the jumper was one of the Colonel’s daughters. Where Cooper stole it from I do not know.
The movie from South Africa from about 1984, "The Gods Must Be Crazy," seemed to have some similarities--both feature a villainous mixed-race man who leads astray gullible people of entirely black ancestry.
One interesting thing is the theme music played as the KKK rides around killing blacks and other republicans. It was ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ from Wagner’s ‘Die Valkyrie’. Obviously they did not know in 1915 about the German regime 20 years in the future that treasured Wagner and this music.
Wagner himself was a racialist of some form, which may be related to its use in the film.
It’s a pioneering movie and an impressive bit of progressive propaganda, up there with Triumph of the Will.
Even in a silent movie it is still a well filmed an chilling scene.
It’s been years since I had first seen it. Now I know where the Lost FReepers get some of their notions.
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