Amazon.com: The first true film, a lavish Civil War epic in which Griffith virtually invented the basics of film grammar. Two brothers, Phil and Ted Stoneman, visit their friends in Piedmont, South Carolina: the family Cameron. This friendship is affected by the Civil War, as the Stonemans and the Camerons must join up opposite armies. The consequences of the War in their lives are shown in connection to major historical events, like the development of the Civil War itself, Lincoln's assassination, and the birth of the Klu Klux Klan. Still a rouser, and of great historical interest. Silent with music score. Battle scenes and reconstruction period recreated along with touching scenes of family reunion.
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classic American film I got this because I'm interested in great classic films. This film was better than I expected. It is often viewed as racist, but giving the time when it was made, it's not especially so.
The Birth of a Nation D. W. Griffith's silent film based on The Clansman by Thomas Dixon. Graphics tell the story. Two families, the Stonemans from the north and the Camerons from South Carolina, have their friendship destroyed by the Civil War. Lillian Gish is Elsie Stoneman. Scenes proceed from Civil War battles to the Lincoln assassination to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. There were 625,000 casualties in the Civil War, and this is essentially an anti-war film. Modern critics like Roger Ebert miss the point. Griffith's title refers to the birth of the United States, heretofore a loose confederation of former colonies, not to the birth of the KKK. A graphic near the end reads, "Dare we dream of a golden day when the brutal War shall rule no more."
Birth of A Nation: a devastating commentary on the KKK Birth of a Nation is director D.W. Griffith's powerful but violently controversial masterwork depicting the post-U.S. Civil War experiences of two families, the Stonehams of Pennsylvania and the Camerons of Virginia. The Stonehams (fictional replacements for the very real Radical Republican Congressman Thaddeus Stephens and his family) revel in the North's victory and the imposition of abolitionist policies in the South. The Camerons are depicted as put-upon defeated Southerners trying desperately to preserve the beliefs and morality of the Old South. Portrayed as victims of Northern aggression, the Camerons are beset by newly freed slaves who threaten their lives and livelihoods, including attempting a rape (a controversial subject in 1915 film making) by a former slave of one of the Cameron daughters. Riding to the "rescue" of Southern womanhood is the "heroic" Ku Klux Klan, Hell-bent on preserving the South and driving out the invading Northern carpetbaggers and subjugating the newly freed slaves.
The debates that have raged over this film have focused on the depiction of the KKK as a heroic organization and of Northerners as aggressive and vicious conquerers, equating all Northerners with the barbaric hordes who destroyed "noble" Rome. Controversy has focused on whether Southern-born Griffiths was himself a racist and deliberately depicted the KKK in a positive light or was the film meant to be an ironic rendering of Thomas Dixon's racist play, "The Clansman" There can be no denying that "Birth of A Nation" is a powerful film about a violent period in post-Civil War US history. It is a film that bears watching, not only for the story of the film itself but also for it's reflections of the virulent racism present in US society in the years prior to the US entry into WWI.
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