Film Review: The Birth Of A Nation

The Birth of a Nation, by D.W. Griffith, in my belief, is a prime example of why the present world is so ignorant of the past. Because the techniques in the movie were so exceptional at the time, this misinterpretation of the reconstruction period was widespread. When the movie came out, I believe many people were not well enough informed to distinguish between the truth and the distorted. Due to stereotypes and misleading information, it could have been simple to portray African-Americans as distasteful, ill-mannered beings and, contrarily, the Ku Klux Klan as gallant protectors, resulting in the audience misconceiving the truth. As I watched The Birth of a Nation, I was able to compare the misconstrued idea of Reconstruction to what I read in chapter fifteen of our textbook, by Eric Foner.

In this movie, you see the life style on being a slave. Solomon Northup was a free man that was kidnapped and was traded off in the slave trade and endured the life style of a slave. There is a scene in the movie where he is building a house and the white man comes and tells him he is wrong and tells him to rip his clothes off so he can be whipped. Solomon refuse and takes a stand knowing that it is wrong he took a stand for what he though was right. This movie was primarily made to show the harsh conditions that they had to go thought but also an insider some of the slaves that made a stand.

The film is more impactful based on more humane elements such as the great and everlasting bond between Johnny and Uncle Remus. There is no doubt that the racial undertones are there and have to potential to be misconstrued and offensive, but it is more important in this case to view the gestalt of “Song of the South” and, instead of focusing on a seemingly

These movies were full of sexy and over exaggerated stereotypes of the African American race that painted the masses in a bad light which angered the black population who were dealing with the Civil Rights movement at the time. While the hero of your everyday white film would be someone like Superman, or some larger than life cowboy these movies portrayed pimps, thugs, and hookers as the heroes and main focus. They also had these black characters performing larger than life acts of revenge and heroics against their white foes which angered many due to some seeing these things as a mockery. Some members of black audiences fed up with various racially driven hate crimes viewed these movies as a bad joke thinking things along the lines of,”A real black wouldn’t get away with doing something like that to any white. Later on however we find the influence and success of these films had positive effects as well.

Since the book is centered around the theme ‘Racial prejudices were impactful on the lives of people in the American South’, the setting is important because the South was once fighting for the right to own slaves, and was still holding those prejudices against different races. Therefore the setting is very important to the theme of this novel due to large racial problems in Southern America because people were segregated, lived in small towns away from white society, and were faced with unfair penalties.

He sees African American youths finding the points of confinement put on them by a supremacist society at the exact instant when they are finding their capacities. The narrator talks about his association with his more youthful sibling, Sonny. That relationship has traveled

The film takes place in Alexandria, Virginia. Where racial tensions are high and one high school is forced to integrate through all the madness. T.C Williams is the new school with the football team being the main focus. The football team has not only players but also coaches as well who are black and white and must come together. Their willingness to come together will not only help them succeed on the field but also in the community.

Despite the many great elements of the film, diversity is seriously lacking. There is not a single POC character with a name in the film and only one shot with a person of color in it. It’s as simple as that, there is only one shot in the entire film that has a POC character in it. That is simply ridiculous. Some may argue that it's based on the period of the film and that Anderson was only trying to make it realistic and genuine for that time period.

The film The Birth of Nation is at its core a film about slavery, this film goes along with the documentary, The Slave Narratives, both highlighting and revealing the true treatment of slaves in that time era. They both bring up the controversy of a slave standing up to their white masters, most people in the documentary were still afraid to talk against their white masters out of fear while Nat Turner refused to acknowledge the truth about his white masters until he sees just how low the bar of humanity towards slaves really is. However, this film also not only connects the past struggles with slavery but the present form of racism in today’s society. The film was in the works for years; although, it was not until 2016

In any case, the film paves the way for other innovative movie producers to manipulate the technological input in their films and may surpass the levels attained by Avatar and other technology-ridden films like Star Wars. The acclamation to produce solely a film via technology and animations opens the field of technological competition by the various film producers to impress movie lovers as much as possible. Nonetheless, the failures in the movie Avatar from the sole dependency on technological input should be a learning lesson for the future production of films that base their plot, characters, and story on technology and computer

Despite all their similarities such as their relentless desire to succeed and survive, the Hollywood Jews were different from one another. This was evident and reflected in their films. Louis B. Mayer’s vision of the good American life was symbolized in his optimistic MGM movies. Harry Cohn’s modesty found expression in the plain-speaking common sense of Frank Capra’s heroes (Champlin). In their films, the Hollywood Jews created a combination of ideas and images that were powerful enough to colonize the American imagination.

Citizen Kane by Orson Welles is a cinematic classic, released in 1941. Citizen Kane challenged traditional narrative and technical elements of classic Hollywood cinema. Kane was narrated by several people that include their take on Kane’s life. The story unfolds by many flashbacks and is told by different perspectives over the years through different narrations. Charles Foster Kane was a millionaire, head of newspapers and died saying “rosebud”.

1. To answer the first question during the early 1910s, D. W. Griffith was sent by the his production company to the west coast. He started filming on a vacant lot in close proximity to Georgia Street in downtown Los Angeles. D.W then filmed his first short film ever, it was a melodrama about California in the 19th century, when it was under the ownership of Mexico. After that Griffith begun doing a lot of short melodramas which helped evolve his style.

The film starts out with an African American man walking in the suburbs. He sees a car and is frightened. A person in a hood strangles him from behind and kidnaps him. This illustrates the fear African Americans have in a white society. The movie then fasts forwards to New York City and turns the focus on Chris who is a successful young photographer.

Films of propaganda or bigotry impact societies by inspiring feelings of fear which then increase people's ignorance which lead to increases in already massive feelings of racism in the time era of Jim Crow Laws in American. The film Birth of a Nation directed D. W. Griffith set groundwork work for cinema, but the film lives in infamy because of the film racism, “The film has been praised for its technical virtuosity and damned for its demeaning and racist depiction of black Americans. Birth was a kind of rite of passage for American movies, marking a transition from crude infancy to a robust adolescence. Griffith and his cameraman Billy Bitzer used a dazzling array of techniques to propel the story forward. Moving, tracking and panning