3 - The Birth of a Nation

Number 3 coming in hot!

Title: The Birth of a Nation
Instructor: D.W. Griffith
Year: 1915, big jump up from number 2 (1903)
Runtime (My version): Long, I am not sure, explains later. The movie should be around 3 hours though. And I think mine was too.

Seen: Spring 2009

How i got this: Was able to watch it on youtube along with some pretty entertaining comments. Got a version from a torrent too, thought it might be abandonedas well...

Plot Outline: Epic tale of how wars make friends kill each other, how the civil war in America influenced everyone and how negroes cant be given too much influence if society is to remain intact. Seriously, that's what it's about!

First impression: All this civil war and KKK must make a weird but entertaining movie. The screenshots in the book made it all look very interesting actually.
But on second thought: WTF? This effing movie just made me root for the KKK. What the effing F? Apart from that fact, nice movie!

General comments: When it comes to making a solid movie, D. W. Griffith must have been the man back then. Seriously, the battle scenes are huge! Secondly, the camera techniques are amazing. And even more when compared to the older entries in this book! This was the most expensive movie ever made at the time as far as I'm informed, and it shows. There are scenes with hundreds of people fighting. Really expensive impressive stuff.

The movie is long, yes, but it is bearable as the plot moves on in a tolerable pace most of the movie.

Settings are great, beautiful scenery. Especially funny are the "Historical Facsimiles" or what ever they were called. Short entries in the movie, stating that the following scene is an exact replica of what really happened back then. Talk about selective representation of reality man.

The plot is good, well told, and develops well, when you disregard the countless directly offensing portrayals of coloured people. The suspense in the end is really genuine, it had me going and this surprised me very much. Especially considering how old the first two movies of this book had looked.

The acting is generally good, but very dramatic. This may take some getting used to, but ends up working fine with me.

The movie does not look almost a hundred years old to me actually. Worth watching.

Music: Nice music, catchy and quite traditional, I thought I heard some old american traditional tunes in there as well...

Pictures: Really beautiful and impressive, approaching amazing.

Essentially this is: A fatastic movie with a wrong, wrong message. Especially considering that people might very well have been even more receptive of its message back in the day.

Why you should see this: An early truly epic movie, this is not to miss out on.
Why you shouldn't see this: If you are very easily manipulated, pass out on this one, you might just end up wearing sheets and pointy hats along with the local gang of heroes.

Honorable mention: In this movie, boys make out when they die in war. The dying scene with the two boys being way too close for comfort made me consider stop watching the movie in the train. Seriously. It was just so embarrasing. And I know that being gay is okay and all. It just freaked me out. Sorry.

And oh yeah, that silly guard, see the movie, you'll know what i mean. Silly silly man.

Final rating: 84/100% - This has undeniably shaped the movie industry, no matter how wrong the message of the movie may be.