Did you ever have a sister?

The Birth of a Nation

(1915)

Some 20 years ago Ms. Tonic and I watched a rental VHS of this that, as I recall, clocked in at less than half the 185 minutes I watched tonight. Perhaps one of us wondered aloud whether we had been slipped a Reader's [Viewer's?] Digest condensation of the film, but all I remember is being surprised and not a little relieved that this epic film was so short.

So yes, to answer your first question, this is the first time I've ever seen the film in its entirety. And yes, to answer your second, it is everything it has been made out to be: mind-bogglingly racist and revisionist, and at the same time a textbook example of effective filmmaking at its finest, with a narrative momentum that made it hard to find a place to stop for a pee.

Fortunately, about halfway through, the tragically-misguided-on-the-issue-of-states'-rights-but-essentially-humane-and-well-intentioned president gets shot, and that turns out to be the perfect intermission moment for more than one reason. 'Cause until then, the politics is only pro-Confederacy; it's not until the second half that it becomes pro-Nazi.

Here's the thing, you see: the southern reaction to Reconstruction--including the genesis of the Klan--was all about, not to put too fine a point on it, pussy. Specifically, Caucasian, southern pussy. Even more specifically, the hunger of negroes [sic], including mulattoes [sic] for same, and their proclivity to rape if not accorded same consensually, which, of course, they would never be, because, as we see, any unmarried, virginal (please excuse the redundancy) southern woman would rather throw herself fatally onto rocks than to surrender that which her countrymen (including, critically, her brothers) had fought valiantly but futilely to defend.

This, of course, is the same battle Quentin Compson (the first one; the male one; the one with a sister) was fighting 45 years after the war and George Wallace was still fighting a century postbellum. So why should we be surprised that the Kentucky-born Mr. Griffith was fighting it a half-century after Appomattox and almost a century ago (my god, really? the Civil War is almost 150 years in the past? but I remember so clearly when it was just a century past! I was so young and full of promise then!), and my god, he fought it as well as anyone on the wrong side possibly could. Even the score--what I listened to was a modern score, but based on the original--made me want to root for the guys in the bedsheets. Hey, Coppola showed us that we don't necessarily have to believe in what's going on to get behind action scored to the Walkürenritt.

Anyway, if you've always thought, "I suppose I should see it, but I'm sure I'll hate it and afraid I won't," you're right on all counts, and mainly the "should see it" count.