一个国家的诞生 The Birth of a Nation (豆瓣)

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导演: D.W. 格里菲思 (D.W. Griffith)
编剧: D.W. 格里菲思 (D.W. Griffith) / Frank E. Woods / Thomas F. Dixon Jr.
主演: Lillian Gish / Mae Marsh / Henry B. Walthall

制片国家/地区: 美国
上映年度: 1915

imdb链接: tt0004972

剧情简介 · · · · · ·

　　Before 'The Birth of a Nation,' motion pictures were a medium with the potential to be an art. This movie, more than any afore, realized that promise. It's the most important film ever made; it's the birth of an art. Alas, it's also racist.
　　Apparently, director D.W. Griffith was ignorant of his own racism; the controversy surrounding the film is said to have dumfounded the naïf... (展开全部) 　　Before 'The Birth of a Nation,' motion pictures were a medium with the potential to be an art. This movie, more than any afore, realized that promise. It's the most important film ever made; it's the birth of an art. Alas, it's also racist.
　　Apparently, director D.W. Griffith was ignorant of his own racism; the controversy surrounding the film is said to have dumfounded the naïf Griffith. The son of a Confederate soldier, his prepossession for an antebellum South wasn't, if not still, unusual. Histories of the day, including those by would-be US President Woodrow Wilson, supported his perverted depiction of the Ku Klux Klan saving a South pillaged by carpetbaggers, scalawags and encouraged Negroes. The film quotes Wilson's "History of the American People." Thomas Dixon Jr. himself solicited the White House screening where the President famously responded, "It is like writing history with lightening, and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." Dixon's racist book trilogy and the subsequent play were Griffith's inspiration for 'The Birth of a Nation.'
　　In the film, the American Civil War and Reconstruction disrupt the once friendly relations between the Unionist Stonemans and the Confederate Camerons. The first part of the film is mostly free of controversy; it's idyllic romanticism and melodrama typical of Griffith, absent Dixon. And, the battle scenes are excellent. Explosions, smoke and hundreds of extras fill the action. Future prominent directors Raoul Walsh and Erich von Stroheim assisted the direction. The action shifts between bird's eye views and medium shots, demonstrating vast scope with attention to isolated skirmishes. Including Griffith with 'Judith of Bethulia,' filmmakers had until now failed to realize massive battles with such grandeur. To top it off, cinematographer G.W. "Billy" Bitzer's moving camera shot of the Little Colonel's charge.
　　The second half of the film, when Congressman Austin Stoneman (an obvious characterization of Abolitionist Senator Thaddeus Stevens) and his mulatto protégé Silas Lynch lead the freed slaves into postwar power, is when the racism becomes overt. Blacks are portrayed as childish morons or as easily excitable brutes--harmless enough if put in their place, such as with the condescending "faithful souls." According to Griffith, it's the mulattos that are especially dangerous, because they posses the cunning of a white with the animalism of a black. What they want is to "marry," which means rape, white virginal women. The film is sexist, too. This is most evident in the infamous scene of the Black buck Gus chasing the childlike Mae Marsh through the woods, to a cliff she leaps from to preserve her purity. It's especially offensive because it's so well done, except for the "Little Sister" ludicrously surviving the fall briefly for a last gasp. The photography sets it apart, and the crosscutting intensifies the classic last-minute rescue attempt, as the Little Colonel enters the action.
　　Yet, the Klan rescue is by far the most offensive and concurrently most exciting sequence in the film. Griffith and his editors, headed by James and Rose Smith, crosscut between multiple actions, climaxing with the rescue of Elsie Stoneman from the threat of being raped, the Aryans and faithful souls under siege and the whole of Piedmont under the heel of a black mob. To that date, it's the most advanced, amazing montage and remains impressive to this day. Before, Griffith had found how exciting well-edited suspense could be, with 'The Battle at Elderbush Gulch' and his last-minute rescue flicks, such as 'The Girl and Her Trust.' Moreover, a variation of Wagner's "The Ride of the Valkyries" greatly intensifies the crescendo.
　　The silhouette of Klansmen riding upon a hill, with the sunrise behind; the moving camera shot of the approach; the angled camera positions: Bitzer and Griffith photograph it brilliantly, too. That is, besides the indoor shooting. Theatricality is the film's major cinematic weakness. This is most evident in the missing walls. The narrative structure is also traditional. Griffith would never do otherwise, and it is certainly not unique for 1915. Moreover, filmmakers were beginning to exploit the advantages of controlled filming within studio sets by now, but the open-air sets with natural lighting, as used here, were still prevalent. And, at the least, the sets here are decorated in detail. Furthermore, Bitzer and Griffith were innovative in their beautiful outdoor photography, with camera movement and positioning, emotive tinting, nighttime photography and good use of split-screens and of masking the camera lens.
　　The acting is also theatrical, but Griffith did direct his actors to be subtler in comparison to contemporaneous film acting. Lillian Gish rose to the forefront of this style, largely because of this film, which made her a star. She plays Elsie Stoneman, who has the more prominent of the two romantic relationships in the film with a soldier from the other side; she's the epitome of Griffith's ideal virginal white female. I think there are some especially well-acted moments here for its time. The sequence with Marsh using ermine in attempt to garment her ragged housedress for the homecoming of her brother, and Henry Walthall's slow, moving walk towards the front door of home is especially poignant, showing the destitute of the postwar South.
　　'The Birth of a Nation' is a troublingly racist picture, which is said to have revived the KKK. Nevertheless, its importance in film history and its cinematic merits are immense. There are other impressive works from this time: films by Bauer, Chaplin, Christensen, DeMille, Tourneur and Starewicz. Yet, to say the least about 'The Birth of a Nation,' as far as I've seen, nothing before matches its scale with such filmic innovation.
　　It runs for 12 reels--having cost some $110,000 to make. Its vast popularity also had incalculable effects on movies as an industry; according to Griffith-biographer Richard Schickel, it grossed more than $60 million by 1917. Its influence, not only on cinéma, is enormous. No other film has been as important to the direction of the medium as an industry and an art.

豆瓣成员常用的标签(共101个) · · · · · ·

格里菲斯(149) 美国(116) 默片(90) D.W.Griffith(58) 经典(57) 美国电影(55) 1915(27) 历史(25)

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远离暴力，珍爱生命	来自Vincent	2008-11-08
厉害	来自啊江	2008-07-08
转载	来自dormant	2007-03-10

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