It was a standard film, a landmark film of art, the highest-grossing film of the silent film period, with an audience of more than 200 million by 1946, but this was also. It was also a film that caused great controversy at the time, and the film was described in this way, and there has never been a film that is revolutionary in technique and reactionary in content. There is such a shocking contradiction between them, so what is the birth of a country?
<h3 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >01 magnificent historical giant, wrong view of history</h3>
The Birth of a Nation premiered on February 8, 1915, a three-hour epic blockbuster that depicts the famous Civil War in American history, that is, the emancipation of slavery films initiated by President Lincoln, directed by David Griffiths, known as the father of American cinema, the most creative narrative master in the history of early American cinema, who explored and invented many narrative techniques himself, and more importantly, it is a collection of early world cinema is art. The birth of a country is based on the parallel fate of the two families in the north and south of the United States, showing the magnificent history of the American Civil War, both grand historical events, historical scenes and delicate emotional and psychological performances.
In the film. You will see a mother with a group of fearful children to escape the war on the hillside, at the foot of the mountain is the charcoal of the war, the picture that was dyed red is the famous 1864 Atlanta Fire, the most prosperous and beautiful city in the South, the Northern Army ignited and burned for half a month into ashes, this paragraph not only shows a grand historical scene, but also expresses the delicate emotions between mother and son, but also brings out the director's reflection and value judgment, showing the most important period in American history. The birth of a country is a brilliant masterpiece, but his view of history is wrong, which is the root of his criticism and criticism, Griffith was born in the family of planters in the South, his father was also a colonel in the Southern army, from a young age to hear his sympathy, naturally fell to the side of the backward forces in the South who refused to accept black slavery, and saw that in Griffith's film, the blacks were originally happy to work in the fields, humble and friendly, safe and self-kept, and got along with white masters peacefully, everything was in order, So from the performance level of the film, the so-called war to liberate black people is unreasonable, in the film the image of black people is extremely negative, or the greater deception or greed and cruelty compared with white people are low quality, Griffith is a master of storytelling and shaping characters, a few shots can degrade black people to the soles of their feet.
In the movie, the black man takes you to understand, the whole scene is chaotic and disorderly, the black man is rude and rude, absurd to the extreme, everyone looks at this shot of taking off the boots and showing off the feet, the audience seems to be able to smell the unpleasant smell across the screen, and the following paragraph is violent through the outdoor black people, the indoor people are worried and uneasy, after repeated switching, and finally there are three ku Klux Klan people who rush to the rescue, Griffith actually formed a rational logic through this montage language, This justified the notorious racist Ku Klux Klux Klan.
So this is a racist film, from the first day of its release, it has aroused strong opposition from all walks of life in the United States, and in some cities it has even caused riots from the president of the United States down to the common people, except for a few racists, the vast majority of people have a negative attitude towards Honda's political content, this racist tendency must be criticized today, pointing out the problem of the birth of a country in terms of content and narrative themes, there is no doubt that this film has achieved brilliant achievements in art. Before the birth of Griffith and a country, although the film spread rapidly around the world, people always used the name of the active photo theater to call the film, mainly because the film is still attached to the traditional drama and the emerging photography, without its own independence, that is, it is not found. Cinema became a fundamental feature of art, and it was Griffiths who did the work.
Griffith's great contribution to film is that he changed the composition of the film, before him the unit of composition of the film is the scene of the play, the camera is fixed, that is, a long film, there may be several scenes, there are simple connections between you, but Griffith in the filming of the unit of composition becomes a shot, by several shots to form a scene, and then there are several scenes to form a film, then Griffith laid the foundation of the film, as an independent art, The paragraph predicted in the film has this paragraph, which is a group that sees each space, allowing the audience to clearly confirm the relative position of each space part, so that the audience will have a clear sense of orientation after switching shots.
The box where President Lincoln was assassinated. The president's bodyguard should have done his duty, but he wanted to watch the drama too much, leaving his post without permission to cause tragedy, and in order to show that he was drawn from his post by the plot, the film set up a set of shots of the clip still watching. The restless bodyguard plus the performance footage in the airport then causes the bodyguard to leave his post, and finally we see the appearance of the bodyguard in the main shot of the theater, and the figure of the ominous assassin begins to appear in the editing of these shots, forming a causal relationship.
<h3 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >02 film became a hallmark of art</h3>
Above we analyzed a complete paragraph of the assassination of President Lincoln, then this paragraph is narrated by a main lens to control several clues in the entire space, each developing, intertwining with each other, influencing each other, forming a close narrative body.
Griffith's use of the lens to narrate the film has broken through the old literary art, especially away from the blessing of the dramatic scene, the camera has gained flexible movement, each shot or the same lens inside the shooting distance can be constantly changed, making the film performance more free, obtaining great expressiveness, on this basis Griffith established a successful example of film narrative is that the film can narrate complex stories, and here Griffith the film found its smallest language unit shot, But how do you organize the shots to form a narrative body? Like the film mentioned earlier before its birth,
because. The reason for the length of the film will also be simple cut and connected, and Fiss has achieved real editing, putting shots of different lengths and angles together according to the law of trend, forming the rhythm and plot continuity unique to the film, this narrative law is griffith through long-term exploration and drawing on the practical achievements of other early filmmakers and created parallel editing, parallel alternating editing, last-minute rescue and other narrative techniques, which constitute the classic narrative mode in film history. The so-called parallel editing refers to two or more plot lines that are happening in different time and space or at different places at the same time, and the film narrates and connects them together.
Then another important work of Griffiths that we will mention below is the same, that is, the 4 stories separated by nearly 2000 years apart are narrated in parallel, and there is no overlap between this plot, because it is a story of completely different time and space, and a country was born in separate representations.
Now in the north and south of the United States two regions, when the plot of the two families occurs, there is also a parallel editing connection, some parallel editing paragraphs can cause a tense rhythm, forming narrative suspense, and the so-called parallel alternating editing refers to two or more plot lines that occur in different spaces at the same time for rapid and frequent cross-editing, which is the narrative method we often see in the film, the aforementioned paragraph of the assassination of President Lincoln, is the use of parallel alternating editing techniques, the most dramatic parallel alternating The click effect is that Griffiths created a last-minute rescue, in a country born This film has two rescue operations, the first time the little sister Lola is chased by the black personality, Flora's brother Colonel Jr. comes to the rescue, the film repeatedly alternates between the shots of the three people, the narrative rhythm is getting faster and faster, and the three lines form a strong dramatic tension, but in the end the little colonel is still one step late.
The last-minute rescue is unsuccessful, and the birth of a nation alternates between the most exciting and important parallels, with emergency passages appearing at the end of the film.
<h3 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >03 two rescues</h3>
Southern plantation owner. Cameron's family was surrounded by black soldiers in a lonely log cabin in the wilderness, black people fiercely attacked the fragile wooden house, Cameron's family desperately resisted, the Ku Klux Klan heard the news and rushed to rescue the white horse team like a tidal wave, the above three sets of pictures alternately appeared on the screen, creating a magnificent, tense narrative effect, but also formed a strong suspense, firmly attracting people, in the black attack on the wooden house, the ku Klux Klan arrived in time, in another huge film choreographed by Griffiths, This narrative effect is more and more intensely expressed in this parallel alternating form and the last-minute rescue it creates, and the passage you see is that the husband is falsely imprisoned in the contemporary story, and is chased by the wife who is executed by hanging, and the governor's train is pardoned, and the husband has been sent to the gallows. It's a moment of serendiment, Griffiths cuts into two close-ups in a timely manner, showing the executioner shaking his hand holding a knife, and this knife is about to touch the rope of execution, the rhythm of this rapid switching is getting faster and faster, more and more nervous, the audience's emotions are also tense to the extreme, and naturally the final solution and relaxation will be greatly developed.
The birth of a country not only marks a qualitative leap in the world's film art, but also its screening and distribution also marks a new starting point for the development of the American film industry, and according to statistics, as of 1946, a country was born, the audience reached 200 million people is the highest-grossing film in the silent film period, and Griffith's annual income exceeded 1 million US dollars, and the profit should exceed 20 million US dollars, which was a groundbreaking record at that time. Therefore, Wall Street in the United States no longer has a strong financial injection and support for the film industry youth who have a wealth and a way to make a movie juggler, so that American films have gained strong development potential.