The Birth of a Nation: The most racist movie ever made?

BBC ^ | 2/8/2015 | Tom Brook

[Borges]

D.W. Griffith’s film was released on 8 February 1915.

One hundred years after it was made The Birth of a Nation still has the power to both enthrall and appall. The film is as confounding as ever, both brilliant and repugnant. Groundbreaking in its use of innovative cinematic techniques, it remains tainted by its brazen racism.

The Birth of a Nation was the creation of DW Griffith, who had tried his hand as an actor and playwright but whose real genius lay in film-making. Nothing on its scale had even been attempted before. It was the epic story of the relationship between two American families, one Union, the other Confederate, at the time of the Civil War and the Reconstruction that followed. The film ran for more than three hours and employed (according to a New York Times report from the time) 18,000 people and 3,000 horses. By 1922 it had been watched by more than five million people. It was the first blockbuster.

“It was a box office success – a mainstream film, so utterly mainstream,” says Professor Alan Rice, a Birth of a Nation expert at The Institute for Black Atlantic Research at the University of Central Lancashire, who has been organising a series of symposia on the film.

It made history by becoming the first film ever to be screened at the White House. But it was revolutionary for another reason: “It was very important in [that] it was the first full-scale long narrative using a lot of the new techniques of film-making,” says Rice.

[cripplecreek]

Considering the fact that Michigan was once a hotbed of abolitionist sentiment in the form of the transitional Freesoil party which led the way to the formation of the GOP with Jackson being one of the named birthplaces of the GOP (Racine Wisconsin being the other)

[ansel12]

When watching old classics it is always worth while to seek out the most highly rated remastered edition.

Trying to struggle through a bad print often makes it useless to try and see what makes the film great.

Carnival of Souls is like that, to appreciate it, on has to see the high quality version.

Hulu has a remastered version but it has ads, often the library can supply a quality DVD of these classics, or purchase one on request.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/398635

[ansel12]

Here are the evaluations of various DVDs of the movie “Birth of a Nation”.

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/dvdcompare/birthofanation.htm

[xp38]

It is also the most important movie in Hollywood history. When it was released there were no major movie studios. The price of $2 admission was unheard of at the time. It was a huge hit. The profits made by the various distributors basically founded the major Hollywood movie studios in subsequent years.

[GeronL]

Django Unchained might be more racist

[depressed in 06]

It made history by becoming the first film ever to be screened at the WILSON White House.

Wilson, the most racist President. He probably beats out Obummer.

When I attended high school, the only thing we learned about Wilson, was, he kept us out of war. Not the despicable person he was.

[cripplecreek]

When I attended high school, the only thing we learned about Wilson, was, he kept us out of war. Not the despicable person he was.

Your teacher must have been a moron. Wilson was in office from 1913 to 1921 and WWI was from 1914 to 1918. Wilson promised to keep America out of war and promptly set up a propaganda machine to promote it. (The Creel Commission or Committee on public information)

[Verginius Rufus]

The original KKK was crushed before the end of Reconstruction. Democrats regained control of the governments in the Southern states and figured out subtler ways of achieving their goal of disfranchising the freedmen (for the most part).

The movie Birth of a Nation inspired the revival of the Klan. This time it was not limited to the South but was strong in a number of Northern states. It was not just anti-black but anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant...so it combined features of the earlier Klan with those of the Know Nothing movement of the 1850s. The new Klan grew quickly in the early 1920s but then declined rapidly...although it continued to exist and to win support from people like Robert Byrd.

[Verginius Rufus]

Wilson was born in Staunton, VA, but his family moved to Georgia when he was very young. He grew up in Georgia and South Carolina. His father was a Confederate chaplain and later a professor at Southwestern Presbyterian College in Clarksville, Tennessee (the college later moved to Memphis and became known as Southwestern at Memphis, and much later was renamed Rhodes College). His brother was an editor for a paper in Nashville. Wilson experienced the Civil War and Reconstruction era as a white Southerner--and thought that the movie Birth of a Nation accurately portrayed that era.

He was the only President, other than those born before the US became independent, who spent part of his childhood as the citizen of another country...until Barack Obama.

[Verginius Rufus]

My father told us a story about a man who was so thoroughly despicable that when he died, the people of his town had a hard time thinking of anything good to say about him at his funeral. Finally someone came up with something: "He was a good whistler."

For Wilson, that good trait may have been that he liked limericks.

One of his favorites that I saw quoted once ran as follows:

"I sat next the duchess at tea
And it was just as I feared it would be:
Her rumblings abdominal
Were something phenomenal,
And everyone thought it was me."

[FreedomPoster]

It made history by becoming the first film ever to be screened at the White House of Progressive icon Woodrow Wilson (D).

Let's get it all on the table for the LIV.