Object #17 - The Viewing Balcony - The Birth of a Nation (1915)

Dir. D.W Griffith

I went into this film expecting to dislike it heavily for it's ridiculously racist and bigoted content, and I did. I went into this film expecting it show me a different view of early cinema, and it did. What I didn't expect on my first viewing was to thoroughly enjoy this 3 hour silent epic, and not just that, but be left with a feeling of cinema being born.

Birth of a Nation is remembered largely for the controversy it created upon release. Griffith, so disillusioned to the American South's bigoted views of the black population, released a film which he repeatedly defended as accurate in it's portrayal of the Civil War, and the history surrounding it. This is a film, where black characters, played by white actors in blackface, are directly portrayed as villains, in a a time when films didn't have villains. They want to sexually assault young white women, make a mockery of the institution which gives them rights, and are thieves and murderers of white people. The staggering fact is that this is treated as historic fact, and any black character not faithful to the whites are portrayed as monstrous. I mean just look at this:

There's a psychological concept called persecutory delusion, where individuals feel that they are being persecuted, normally when there is no threat to them at all. It still happens in the modern-age all the time, look no further than the American Fundamentalist Christians who feel that their religion is being eroded from American culture - 'Put the Christ back in Christmas' and such nonsense. Groups and people like this say such things despite being part of a clear majority, and normally, so prevalent in their society that to claim they are being persecuted is laughable. And we have it here, in spades! It's actually incredibly disheartening to see this attitude continuing towards black people to this day, 100 years after the film's release. This is just one of the many reasons Birth of a Nation is valuable to us. Beyond the controversy, and its merit to film-making as whole, it's very existence as a historical document is fascinating.

That's why I've chosen the above object, even though it doesn't highlight the horrible racist attitudes of the film, as it tells us a lot about film-making, but also the time. The scene is here, where Griffith dramatises, to precise historical detail, the assassination of President Lincoln. This is 50 years after the event, so it's akin to us making a film showing the assassination of Kennedy today, which occurred just over 50 years ago. Without focusing on the excellence of the way this sequence is shot, it's fascinating to see directors, actors, and so on, re-create established history in their time, when the film we watch now is established history in it's own right.     

Colonel Cameron (Henry B. Walthall) and Elise Stoneman (Lillian Gish) are in Ford's theater on the fateful night. These have been our main characters for the majority of the film, and this scene acts as the culmination of the first part of the film. Griffith has an establishing shot of the theater, so we can see the audience, the stage, and the viewing balcony where Lincoln (Joseph Henabery) will sit and be killed. We see Cameron and Elise in the audience, linking their story to the event about to unfold. We are shown Lincoln arrive,  and receive a standing ovation for the end of the war, from our protagonists as well. 

Here's where, to us, the scene continues as we expect. We are shown Lincoln's bodyguard sit outside the door to the balcony. We return to the shot of Lincoln viewing the play, and the wide shot. He returns to the bodyguard, and an intertile tells us that he moved to get a better view of the play. We see him move to another balcony to the side, leaving the President exposed. Ok, so what? Incredible stuff for 1915. What we have here is narrative! The same event from different perspectives, and not only that, it's clear! Some modern filmmakers, in reaction to the shaky-cam of the Bourne series, can't stage scenes to save their lives. We know the position of everyone in the scene. All except one of course.

An intertile has the words 'John Wilkes Booth', and we see the above. The picture is tinted darker, and the lens focused on the villainous Booth. I mean look at him! That's a film villain if you've ever seen one. We see him move to the President's viewing booth, pull his gun, prepare himself, and then we get a close-up. A close-up! 

Just reminding you here, 1915. Close-ups weren't a thing before this film, all silent films were normally single-shot scenes, where, like a play, actors moved around the space on screen, and things happened. In this scene, there's an establishing shot, multiple characters and their viewpoints on the same scene, and even a damn close-up. There's a reason Birth of a Nation is so praised, it invented, and not only that, implemented film techniques with such flair that cinema was changed ever since. That's why I chose this object, as it's the center of this incredible scene that sums up nearly all of the terrific techniques Griffith created for the film. 

Events happen as you would guess. Booth rushes in, fires, Lincoln's head stoops. Booth jumps to the stage, gives his famous quote, and runs offscreen. We cut to the dying Lincoln, and to our protagonists as they respond to the climactic event. 

The rest of the film has other inventive techniques such as larger establishing shots, more effective colour tinting, and an even greater focus on inter-cutting between events to create enticement, as the Klan ride to save the young white girl from the villainous blacks. That scene is an entirely different kettle-of-fish, but what it does overall is show that the magic of films can have us swept up in events in a completely detached way from our morality. 

 In the great critic Roger Ebert's review of the film, he quotes James Agee's view on the battle scene earlier in the film:

"The most beautiful single shot I have seen in any movie is the battle charge in 'The Birth of a Nation.' I have heard it praised for its realism, but it is also far beyond realism. It seems to me to be a realization of a collective dream of what the Civil War was like..."

And that's it in a nut-shell. The film is so realistic in some respects, yet the portrayal of the Klan is so so wrong to any morally-sound person it's hard to forgive Griffith. What the film does, although this wasn't the intention, is show us the most extreme version of negative morals portrayed positively. No other films would be as offensive as Birth of a Nation for a long-time. Hell, if it wasn't for this film, and it's heroic portrayal of the Klan, and damnation of the blacks, the Klan itself wouldn't have had a resurgence and continued to terrorise and murder black individuals across the South for many more years. We could write-off the film for that very reason, but that isn't what mature adults should do. We must question our morals and appreciate the artistry and influence the film has had on film-making.

Thankfully, these days we have films to vicariously live out the hate we have for the racist white-folks of the time. Tarantino's Django Unchained gleefully revels in doling out redemption on slave-owners and racists. The Coen Brother's O, Bother Where Art Thou? makes a mockery of the Klan, taking the sardonic comedic approach in typical Coen style. Isn't it great that this racist film that revolutionised cinematic techniques has borne such gleeful mockery of the morally repugnant? And even at a micro-level, the depiction of history such as Spielberg's Schindler's List, and perhaps more aptly, Lincoln. 

It's a slippery slope this. As enjoyable as it is to see your enemies punished for their backwards ways, it isn't hard to see the tables-turned. Birth of a Nation was the first to show this, and all you  need to do is look at any film over-seen by Joseph Goebbles during the rule of the Third Reich to see how films can reflect the views of the time and culture. Morality is a funny thing, and better philosophers than I have pondered this dilemma. Many of them I'm sure, after watching Birth of a Nation.

I'll end on the words of a better man than I, Ebert himself:

As slavery is the great sin of America, so "The Birth of a Nation" is Griffith's sin, for which he tried to atone all the rest of his life. So instinctive were the prejudices he was raised with as a 19th century Southerner that the offenses in his film actually had to be explained to him. To his credit, his next film, "Intolerance," was an attempt at apology. He also once edited a version of the film that cut out all of the Klan material, but that is not the answer. If we are to see this film, we must see it all, and deal with it all.