Review of The Birth of a Nation (1915) by Jimmy M — 07 Feb 2010

Birth Of A Nation is the third entry in the book, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. I am glad I watched it, but I only did so under literal physical restraint from a friend. While my eyes glazed over during the screening, having thought about the experience I admit that this was a landmark film. It is meaningful from an historical perspective. More importantly a full appreciation of the development of the visual expressiveness of cinema as a whole would be difficult to achieve without understanding the production innovations that it introduced to movies.

Birth of a Nation chronicles the experiences of a southern family from Antebellum days, through the rigors of the Civil War and into the era of reconstruction. The focus is on perceived injustices suffered by the South at the hands of Federal troops, the South's punishment at the hands of Reconstructionists, and by freed slaves. It is slanted to the point of absurdity, yet it was hugely popular even though much of the populace made quite a fuss over its distorted representation of the portrayed events. The fact that it was as well received as it was is revealing of early 20th century folkways and mores. Even Jane Adams founder of Hull House, who dedicated her life to helping and enlightening immigrants and the underclasses had difficulty in criticizing it.

I was more intrigued by the design elements than the story. At the time of its release in 1915, movies were still pretty primitive, bearing more similarity to stage plays than the full immersion visual experience that films now provide. Some of the innovations in presentation include location and night cinematography; parallel editing in which we see in real time, two different events occurring at once; cross-cuts; the use of tracking and panning type shots; and dissolve segue-ways.

BIRTH also exhibited the use of elaborate, actually quite beautiful costumes. When compared to earlier films, it can be seen that Birth of a Nation is a movie that clearly turned the corner from awkward and primitive productions to our modern concept of movies that tell a story using a variety of effective photographic and editing techniques. It is also one of the first motion pictures to attempt to chronicle a chunk of history spanning several years. Compared to early movies like The Kiss it is one of the first substantial films produced that develops a complex story from inception to conclusion in a way that looks and feels like real life. For that reason, I give it a high rating despite the corniness of the plot and its factual inadequacies.