Birth of a Nation (1915)
So in this blog i will talk about movies i watch in my film classes, since im minoring in film, so this should be fun
and right off the bat we are starting with an exception to the rule, this movie is a movie i watched with my dad because he watched it in his film class, since we are both taking film classes, any movie he watched and then i watched, ill talk about it here
So anyway, Birth of a Nation was the highest selling silent movie, raking in a whopping $10 million, thats a crazy amount of money for back in the day, the film was even screened privately to president Woodrow Wilson, and had many innovative camera techniques at the time, such as a moving camera ( 2 shots in the movie, camera moves backwards while characters are charging on horseback) and even very primitive special effects, though they are at the end of the movie
the biggest downside of this movie is...its 3 hours long :/ and with a movie with hardly any dialogue, its really hard to sit through
Ok so what is this wonderful epic of a movie about? well to put it frankly, its about how great the KKK is, yeah...this movie upon its release caused several lynchings and around the time it was released klan membership increased like crazy....yeah....some legacy huh?
well ok to be fair the KKK stuff is only like the last 3rd of the movie, which is still at least an hour if not more,
the movie starts in the pre civil war days following a southern family and a northern family, it goes through happy days, then the war happens and all that some of the family members die then after the war the northern family moves down to the south in the same town as the southern family...i have basically summarized the first 1 1/2 hour to 2 hours of the movie...
things dont get interesting until the last act of the movie, in the aftermath of President Lincolns death, the head of the northerner family is put in charge of ruling the local area due to his radical abolitionist views while this is going on, a black union soldier known as Gus starts hanging around the southern families mansion, despite members of the southern family not liking it when the black soldiers walk down their street, they were told rudely that the blacks have just as much right to use the side walk as they do
tensions rise for a while until the main character of the whole thing, who is one of the members of the southern family doesnt know what to do as (and im quoting the movie here) "the white south is put under the heel of the black south" he looks worryingly over a cliff overlooking a lake, when he spots some children playing down below, he notices some white children scaring some black children using a white sheet, and he gained inspiration, its the same thing as batman choosing the mark of the bat, but instead of striking fear in the hearts of criminals, hes striking fear in the hearts of black people
The newly formed KKK goes around stirring up trouble, when the main characters girlfriend upon learning hes in the KKK breaks off the engagement, but soon after, his sister goes off into the woods and is followed by Gus, Gus asks her for marriage and she runs away to the top of the cliff with Gus in pursuit, telling her that he wont hurt her, but he gets too close and she jumps off, dieing when she hits the ground, out main character takes revenge and him and his fellow klansmen track Gus down, and give him a "fair" trial before killing him
This of course causes racial tensions to flair, causing the governor to increase the amount of black soilders in the streets and to arrest anyone in possession of KKK robes, he then skips town putting a mixed race person in charge, said mixed race person was already selected to be in charge anyway due to a rigged election where rich white folks could not vote, things seem bad for our heros, and it gets worse when the father of the southern family is arrested, but with the help of the stereotypical Black nanny/helpful aunt, he is freed and they escape, meanwhile the main character is assembling the largest force of klansmen the world has ever seen
While our hero gathers his klansmen forces, more trouble brews in town when the main characters former girlfriend goes over to the goverors help, but hes drunk with "wine and power" and he attempts to force marriage onto her, he shows her out side the streets filled with black people saying "see? the streets are filled with my people! soon i will have a black empire and you will rule with me as my queen" and then ties her up when she refuses,
meanwhile, the rest of the southern family escaping the black soldiers find a union soldiers veterans cottage, the Union veterans allow them to stay and help the fight off the black soldiers to "protect their aryan birthright" (direct quote from the movie)
Just when all hope seems lost the main character assembles his large force of Klansmen and the KKK charge to the rescue, the film frequently showing the "helpless white men" and then cutting to the KKK on their way to save them, the KKK finally arrives and saves the family and the town, our hero saves the girl and all the blacks are disarmed and it ends happily
a few cinematic notes here, most of the movie has a sort of yellow filter over it, except for scenes with fire in them, they have a red tint over them, also repetitive and in most cases unfitting music plays over the entire movie, however the best use of music was at the end, when the KKK are charging to the rescue, flight of the valkyries is playing
so over all its an...interesting movie to say the least
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