  Adventures in Netflix: D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation In my continuing self-made film school attempt to watch all 100 movies on the urlLink AFI's 100 years list , I got around to this, the oldest feature. And certainly the only one that unabashedly features, in a starring role, as the romantic lead and hero, the entire Ku Klux Klan.
I'm sure entire theses have been written about this movie and endless court documents and reviews exist. So what can I, li'l ol' me, add to the discussion, I wonder? What more can be said about a movie that is so of it's time politically and so ahead of it's time technically? That is so beautifully shot and so disturbingly written? That is so three hours long? That features such beautiful actresses and costumes and such atrocious blackface make-up?
That features the incomparable Lillian Gish getting flirtatious with a bedpost? What I can say is that, if you can somehow strip away from your mind all the hateful propaganda, this movie makes the KKK look stupider than the 3 Stooges. At least the Stooges look like they're being ridiculus on purpose. As I said, the movie has, in the romantic lead, essentially the entire KKK. There is a handsome young leader for the first half of the film, but once he puts on the hood, he somehow gains an entourage of about 85 guys on horseback that are always with him in everything he does and, due to the hoods, indistinguishable from him. First, let's take on those hoods. They look like what they are- dirty bedsheets. And apparently the important guys get to skip the dunce-cap cones and instead are issued round ghosty heads with 18" toothpicks sticking straight up out of the top.
Like the stingers of giant bees. Only no stripes and instead of coming out of their butts, the pointy part comes out of their heads. Okay, so you have 86 guys, all looking exactly alike, riding around in their moms' dirty laundry and completely overkilling every situation. Especially considering the more common Hollywood movie convention of the superman- one lone man is able to defend a cabin against an entire army, rescue the girl, capture the evil supervillain and rebuild the town all on his own. This movie reverses the convention. Going up against one guy in a cabin? Bring 85 guys on horseback with you! Girl needs rescuing from the supervillain? Sure, honey, me and my 85 guys will be right there.
It led me to ponder other situations in which 86 KKK guys on horseback could show up and try to make themselves useful. Change a lightbulb? Kitten up a tree? Here comes 86 guys in hoods gallupping up to the rescue. All in that choppy fast-slow motion of antique movies, too. Did little Timmy catch the school bus without his lunch again? Send out the 86 guys on horseback! Little old lady need help crossing the street? Good thing there were 86 guys on horseback to help her!
I know that this, socio-historically, is actually a profound statement about the way that the KKK works (no individual responsibility or accountability, fear and intimidation through numbers and anonymity). But it looked like a really stupid SNL sketch. The kind that they put on at about 12:50am, when they're sure nobody's watching anymore. 
