These two images are from D.W. Griffith's film Birth of a Nation, made in 1915.If you haven't seen it, you should. Lots of film buffs consider it the greatest film ever made-- with an asterix.
It uses some absolutely amazing techniques, introducing (or, at least combining into one film for the first time) many of the now-standard techniques of film-making:
--point of view shots, where we feel like we're looking through the character's eyes
--close-ups
--cross-cutting, where the editing allows us to watch two or more events develop at the same time
HOWEVER, it's also blatantly racist, portraying the KKK as heroes, bringing order to the South after the Civil War.
For a fuller story, check out wikipedia-- everything surrounding this film is quite fascinating: the fact that the newly-formed NAACP formed organized protests that resulted in it being banned in many cities, the fact that several African-American filmmakers made responses to it, and the fact that Griffiths himself was quite surprised that people found it offensive. It was also the highest-grossing film of all time until the Wizard of Oz, 25 years later.
2 comments:
How did the African American filmmakers respond to the KKK being portrayed as heroes?
well, several made films of their own, portraying a more realistic version of things. of course, at that time, americans weren't terribly interested in what marginalized voices had to say, so these movies were mostly ignored outside their own community.
and griffiths himself made a movie called "intolerance" a year later, showing the evils of bigotry, etc-- seems he wasn't an outright racist nutbar-- just awfully misguided.
also (as an interesting aside), "birth" charged $2 a ticket, which was unheard of then. i think it works out to like $36 in today's money.
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