Anyone who has seen a certain number of films has heard of this film more or less. Naturally, I also learned about the greatness of this movie through many channels. By watching AFI100, I want to see how great it is.
The film tells the story of two families before and after the Civil War, and involves some events in American history. The congressional leader of the Northern family has three children, two boys and a girl. The two brothers came to visit the Southern Family. The Southern family also has three children, a boy and two girls. The five people get to know each other more personally, and there is love between the boy and the girl. The eldest son of the southern family fell in love with the girl of the northern family, although he had only seen the photos, while the eldest son of the northern family fell in love with the second daughter of the southern family. They lived there for a while, and they said goodbye after they said goodbye. When the Civil War broke out, children from both families in the North and South joined the army. A few years later, the younger son of the southern family died on the battlefield together with the younger son of the northern family, and the eldest son of the southern family was also injured and admitted to the hospital. The towns of the Southern family were also frequently ransacked by robbers. The war was over, the eldest son of the southern family met with the daughter of the northern family in the hospital, and the two had a good impression during the contact. Then, after the mother pleaded with President Lincoln, the eldest son returned home with his mother in the South. At this time, Lincoln was raped, and the power of the country fell into the hands of the leaders of Congress, the Northern Family. Congressional leaders sent their cronies, a mulatto, to the South to implement his policies of empowering blacks. So, in a small southern family town, blacks led by mulatto overthrew white rule. The new policy made all parliamentarians elected by blacks, blacks also controlled the military, and blacks became a new class. To see the implementation of the new policy, congressional leaders brought their two children to the South, where they lived in a Southern family home. The two lovers met again, making the eldest son of the southern family and the daughter of the northern family glued together. The black-dominated government passed a new resolution allowing blacks to marry whites. Under this policy, a rude black man wanted to force the youngest daughter of a Southern family to marry her, and she disagreed. Under the threat of black people, the youngest daughter jumped off the cliff. The grief-stricken eldest son of the Southern family decided to defend himself, and he formed the Ku Klux Klan, imitating the children's play disguise. In this way, the Ku Klux Klan waged various struggles against the black army. Not only did they rescue their own parents, the kidnapped daughter of the Northern family, but they also helped the leaders of Congress who were coerced by mulattoes. In the end, the Ku Klux Klan, led by the eldest son of a northern family, liberated entire cities from black control and prevented blacks from voting in new elections. A terrorist organization is born!
This is a movie that celebrates the Ku Klux Klan, which, as the movie describes it, is a "great organization." However, the relevant information does not say that. According to American history, the Ku Klux Klan has existed in the United States since its birth, and has different goals with different times, but "racism" and violence have always been the most important part of this organization. two cores. According to Wikipedia, the general description is as follows:
The Ku Klux Klan (abbreviated as KKK) is a non-governmental organization that pursues white supremacy in American history and now, and is also a representative organization of American racism.
The Ku Klux Klan was formed in 1866 by veterans of the Confederate Army defeated in the Civil War. In the early days of its development, the KKK's goal was to restore Democratic power in the American South and to oppose policies imposed by the Union Army in the South to improve the treatment of old black slaves. The group often uses violence to achieve its goals. In 1871, President Ulysses Grant signed the Ku Klux Klan and the Enforcement Act, which forcibly outlawed the political organization.
The second organization to use the name was founded in 1915 by William Simmons on Stone Mountain near Atlanta. It is a for-profit organization whose purpose is to win the comparative advantage of the predominantly British Protestant white population over blacks, Roman Catholics, Jews, Asians and other immigrants. Although the group promoted racism and committed lynchings and other acts of violence, it operated openly in the United States and at its peak in the 1920s had 4 million members, including politicians at all levels of government. During the Great Depression, the organization's growth slumped, and many members were lost to conscription or volunteering during World War II.
The group's name, "Ku Klux Klan," has also been used by many other groups, including those opposed to the Civil Rights Act and advocating racial discrimination in the 1960s. In the United States and other countries today, dozens of organizations still use all or part of their words as names.
You can also learn more about the beginning and end of the Ku Klux Klan through Wikipedia's Ku Klux Klan page. In addition, the film played a key role in the formation of the second Ku Klux Klan. "This film describes the region where the KKK succeeded as the Midwest, when in fact it should be the American South. A lot of white people at the bottom of society watched the film and thought their poverty was caused by blacks or Jewish banks. This kind of propaganda is similar to Nazi Germany. The film led to the popularity of the Ku Klux Klan in the United States. Actors dressed as members of the Ku Klux Klan were hired to advertise at the test screening in Los Angeles. members, and then at the official premiere in Atlanta, the regrouped Ku Klux Klan took to the streets to cheer. In some places, rabid Southern audiences even shot at the stage screen.” So, the film is not just for the Klan. The party made an ode, and it also contributed to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, which I never thought of before watching this film.
As a Chinese, I don't know much about American history, and I don't want to know too much. So, neither the history and influence of the Ku Klux Klan nor the political significance of its existence is irrelevant to me. I'm even less interested in whether the film is about the real KKK, or whether it's a glorification of it and an anthem for it. It's all up to historians and politicians to comment, watching movies shouldn't be so heavy.
The greatness of this film lies in its pioneering position in film technology. But from the point of view of film technology, I don't feel how great it is. Actually, this is not surprising. After watching a large number of modern movies, we have become accustomed to the various techniques and methods in the movie screen. For this great movie, which pioneered film technology, we can't feel how "great" it is. As for its greatness, after checking some information, I came to know: it has a complete plot and rich means of expression, as well as extensive use of parallel montage and cross montage, the most classic is the "Last Last Minutes to Rescue". Hey, I can only say that I am too deeply poisoned by modern movies, and I don't see the "greatness"! The complete plot is one of the basic elements of modern films; the rich means of expression are the trump card of the director in order to express the plot and style of the film; the collage and editing techniques of the two film arts of parallel montage and cross montage are modern films. Abusive tactics, and now they are not only used in movies, but also in some American TV series. It can be seen that the "greatness" of this film can only be experienced by film professionals, and a layman like me has no ability to appreciate it.
Although I don't understand the "greatness" of the film, there are a few good things about this film that I can see. For one, there are a lot of big scenes in the movie. There are a lot of large-scale live-action fights in the film, with a couple of thousands of people fighting in the first part, and a massive KKK-black fight in the second part. It is rare to be able to shoot such a big scene nearly a hundred years ago! These big scenes give the movie an epic style. Second, the story of the film is very complex, but the film narrates several stories clearly and completely. Moreover, each story line in the film is connected, and these stories converge into one story at the end. In that era, it was very rare to have such a complete and rich plot, and it was even more difficult for the director to tell such a story in a very orderly manner. These two points are the only two advantages I feel after watching the movie.
In addition to the advantages, the film also has disadvantages. For example, the time of the movie is too long, and some useless pictures make the movie lengthy. For example, the fighting scenes can be shortened, some black pictures can also be shortened, and the stories that happened in the southern family can also be deleted. Also, some scenes are used too much over and over again, such as the yard of the Southern family, which appears more than ten times in the film, and appears when telling different plots. Since they are willing to spend money to shoot large-scale battles, why are some small scenes not made more detailed? The film has one of the biggest shortcomings, that is, the characters are too similar in shape. I watched the movie twice before I understood the character setting of the movie. When I saw it for the first time, I couldn't tell who's son and who's daughter was. Their clothes, shapes, and looks are so similar, especially the men with beards, they are exactly the same! Although people of that era were like this, there should be some distinctions. Can the director understand it when he reads it himself? In addition, there is a disadvantage that is not a disadvantage. There are several black people who play the main role in the film who look much darker than the average black person, and it is obviously a white person pretending to be. This way of filming left me speechless. Could it be that the director could not find a good black actor, so he came up with such a trick? It looks too awkward!
After watching the whole movie, if you don't check the relevant information, I believe that many people will agree with the movie's point of view, so this movie is very sexual. In the film, black people are vilified, black people are portrayed as thugs who burn, kill, and loot, and white people are portrayed as innocent victims, who endure black people resignedly and so on. The appearance of these scenes makes people who have seen the film disgusted by the behavior of black people, and because of this, this film set off the second climax of the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. From this point of view, the film is quite successful and plays a role in promoting the idea of art media. However, it is precisely because of the ideas expressed in this film that it did not enter the list of AFI100 in the 2007 edition, and the eyes of the masses are still sharp!
Not to mention the actors in this film, they are all people born in the last century, and most of them died before the middle of the last century, they belong to the ancients. The male actors are basically the same. The two actresses are Lillian Gish and Mae Marsh. However, this also happens to reflect one of the advantages of the film, the characters can stay young in the picture, even if the actors are no longer alive.
All in all, a great movie with a strong political and sexual sensibility, too "great" to see where there is a good movie.
Lillian Gish
Lillian Gish
Mae Marsh
Mae Marsh
Sequence: 0550
The Birth of a Nation (top). The.Birth.Of.A.Nation.D1.1915.2D5.MiniSD-TLF
The Birth of a Nation (bottom).The.Birth.Of .A.Nation.D2.1915.2D5.MiniSD-TLF
2011-09-16
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