Comments on Screen Savour: The Birth of a Nation (1915)

Haha, well, I'm glad that, much like your own ...

2009-08-04T18:37:42.192-04:00

Haha, well, I'm glad that, much like your own feelings about the film itself, the passage of time hasn't dampened the enjoyment of my review. ;)

There's no need to explain or apologize the blog-hopping phenomenon. Of all people, I'm among the worst at making sure I keep up with all the blogs that are out there. (I hear you on Wonders, which has also drawn me in. And since they began running links to your publications [kudos on that, again], I feel like I'm getting a Dancing Image/Wonders two-for.)

My life simply doesn't afford enough time or energy to keep up with it all. I try to post regularly during the summer because I can, but come the end of August and beginning of school once more, I imagine I'll find myself back down to a once-a-week post. Oh well. The great thing about the archives system, which I've tried to simplify here by chronology, director, and my own "masterpiece" classification much as you have done by alphabet, welcomes such late-coming comments. Once I fulfill my pledge to upload everything onto IMDb, I hope to have more comments occurring on past reviews and hopefully the conversation will continue.

T.S., the most compelling reason to start with tha...

2009-08-04T17:52:59.419-04:00

T.S., the most compelling reason to start with that movie is of course BECAUSE it's such a challenge. And now that I've aired the idea (a few times, actually) I may just HAVE to begin with it! Glad I'm catching up with your site now, don't mind my tardiness with this comment...I come wandering around to most blogs (except Wonders in the Dark of course, which seems to have slipped a narcotic through cyberspace directly into my veins...) every few weeks/months or so and see what I missed in the mean time.

My own blog-visiting habits are part of what encouraged me, along with other considerations, to post more slowly at my own blog and to encourage readers to take a more random, less chronological approach to my own site (hence the 1st anniversary alphabetical round-up). I wonder to what extent this is my own quirk and to what extent other bloggers/readers share it. Not that I mind blogs (like yours) that post regularly - just that I may play catch-up once in a while! I do like the idea of blogging becoming less disposable, less of an ephemeral enterprise...Of course, good writing tends to do that anyway so the fact that, for example, I'm finally reading your Birth of a Nation post nearly 2 months late does not have any effect on its quality!

None of this is neither here nor there but my embarrassment at missing this excellent piece for such a long time spurred me on!

To a great degree, I feel a bit of envy for those ...

2009-08-04T17:44:32.302-04:00

To a great degree, I feel a bit of envy for those who, like you, can be pulled in watching it and not be shaken out of the experience. In fact, I'm certain if I felt a glimmer of that my feelings on the film would swing more toward greater appreciation. Part of why I returned it after a year is Agee's unabashed enthusiasm for it; I re-read his essay shortly after contributing to the film book meme, and thought that I simply had to see it one more time and review it from another angle.

My feelings on Griffith have indeed evolved, and I'm happy to struggle with this film in particular. I have no qualms with holding it in masterpiece status, although I do believe it is below that (and for Griffith, Broken Blossoms comes closer, though it is flawed as well). Indeed, because it is one of the seminal works of cinema, it should be held up and revered for what it is and what it did.

I think you should take it on again for your 150 favorite great movies series. I've had a lot of fun re-writing reviews with the space of time, since a review of a film is in many ways your response to it at that moment in your life. Under that pretense I may reconsider other proclaimed masterpieces that I've never loved — High Noon and The Searchers come to mind immediately — in future Screen Savour installments.

An excellent essay, though I disagree with its the...

2009-08-04T14:10:16.925-04:00

An excellent essay, though I disagree with its thesis - indeed, I think Birth of a Nation is unavoidably, embarrassingly great, Griffith's undoubted masterpiece. I wish I could write it off easier than that, but I can't - its storytelling is just too seamless (there's a specific area where I disagree with you), its formal triumph too overpowering...I don't feel distanced at all watching it, but pulled in as if I'm watching a contemporary film.

I may return to add more of my thoughts on your piece, though obviously my thoughts on the film have been covered on my own blog. They may receive further attention if I decided to kick of my "150 favorite great movies" list with Birth; I don't really want to, as I've already said so much on the movie and one always has to spend so much time discussing the racism. Nonetheless, I find the movie so impressive overall that I'm tempted to begin with it. It certainly is one of the seminal works of cinema.

Hokahey - Thanks for commenting! I'm sorry it&...

2009-06-19T22:52:18.416-04:00

Hokahey - Thanks for commenting! I'm sorry it's been such a delay in my response. Yes, that makes a great deal of sense. I wish it weren't the case, obviously, and for the purposes of canonical virtues, I am (as certainly you and others are) willing to view it as objectively as possible. That said, as much as I wish young viewers could see it for what it is, I don't blame them for recoiling. I wish it weren't so, both on Griffith's part and on our part.

Excellent review. I agree with your assessment of ...

2009-06-11T16:04:28.792-04:00

Excellent review. I agree with your assessment of the film's strengths. Most of all, the film is influential. I always show the charge/cannon scene in my film history class. I used to show the KKK rescue sequence at the end, but young audiences just can't get past the racism and the ridiculous white actors in blackface no matter how influential I say that sequence is.

R.D., great points, particularly in the coinage of...

2009-06-11T07:45:07.132-04:00

R.D., great points, particularly in the coinage of Griffith as a synthesizer more than an innovator. I like that terminology. And I'll definitely second the Victorian sexual repression aspect of the film. David Kehr touches on that tremendously well in an essay on the film, where he notes the binary structure of Griffith's oppositions (North v. South, black v. white, war v. peace., etc.) and suggests there's a masculine v. feminine binary at work too — the phallic precipice, as you point out, and notably the battle charge scene with the flag being forced into the barrel of the cannon. I suspect these are accidental revelations into Griffith's psychology, less conscious than the racism (which at best can be seen as latent) but all the more important in our comprehension of Griffith as an auteur.

T.S., what a thoroughly detailed analysis of the m...

2009-06-11T03:59:55.446-04:00

T.S., what a thoroughly detailed analysis of the movie and explanation of your final judgment on it. It's clear you've watched it very carefully and given a great deal of thought to the reasons for your reactions to it. I'm perhaps more willing than you to forgive the movie the narrative flaws you point out because it is so early and because Griffith was so ambitious on the technical level. I think of Griffith in this movie as not a great cinematic innovator, but a great cinematic synthesizer. By this I mean that he grasped how all the then-new techniques of filmmaking could be put together to tell a story in a completely cinematic way, with the camera as a mobile spectator and the director as the equivalent of an author writing a novel. Close-ups, tracking shots, natural lighting (especially in interior scenes, which he called "Rembrandt lighting"), cross-cutting between parallel plots ("It's what Dickens does," he told skeptics), and other techniques--he put them all together to create the total visual experience. He also realized that this could be used to make a point, and that is the problem modern viewers have with the movie. Today the racist point of view of the movie is almost unbearably disturbing. But maybe that served a historic purpose too: to make us more critical of what the filmmaker is trying to get us to believe and not just accept it because the storytelling is so persuasively dramatic. One thing I've always found fascinating about this movie is its Victorian sexual repression. It's the sexuality of the African Americans that is presented as the most threatening thing about them. Freud would have had a field day analyzing the implications of some of the settings in this movie, like that huge phallic precipice Gish is held prisoner on. What a dilemma this movie is: grand storytelling technique in the service of a wholly reprehensible theme.