The Birth of a Nation

Title: The Birth of a Nation
Year: 1915
Country: USA
Director: D.W. Griffith
Producer: D.W. Griffith
Genre: Drama
Runtime: 187 minutes
Viewed: February 25, 2010

Review: Let's begin with stating this movie was 3 hours long. Originally shown in 2 parts, half way through the audience would be given an intermission. After watching the film I understand why! It is understandable why the movie was such a big deal when it was released. The first reason being that it covers a very touchy subject and the second reason being it is much longer than the typical movie. The director uses different lighting throughout the film to help with the understanding of what is happening in the scene. The realization I've come to is it is extremely difficult to follow a film that only has music, I noticed I was unable to remember who was who during the film, which made it difficult to keep up with what was happening. Another big stride in the movie industry at this time was that Griffith had the first orchestral score. While it is easy to understand why this film is in the book, crucial to the future development of film, the movie in a few words is incredibly racist. It was interesting to see how the filmmaker depicted how things happened from his point of view and now to be able to look back at history and see what actually happened.

Rating:
1 Shamrock (I definitely could not watch this again, too long, difficult to follow, and I'm pretty sure watching it gave me a headache. None the less I do understand why it was on the list.)
2 Soccer Balls (Not saying it was a bad movie, I did enjoy parts of it, but the length of the movie makes me not want to watch it again and caused me to become bored with it. If you are interested in cinematic history, definitely watch it, but if you're not, it is not a fun movie it is more a movie to study. I never want to see the KKK riding into triumph while the song Ride of the Valkyries is playing in the background ever again.)

Movie 3 down... 998 to go!