Following Up on Early Racism in Hollywood

I recently wrote about my thoughts on Birth of a Nation and how I found it impossible to appreciate its technical merits due to the argument it made in favor of a racist society.  Here's another blogger's take and another on the issue which I think provides a nice contrast with my own conclusions.

Both essentially argue that the racist portrayals in older films are a sign of the times and that the modern audience should appreciate them as an artifact of history and not expect their removal in the way some feel cigarettes should be removed.

I appreciate the arguments and struggle with them myself.  I came out at the other end of this argument. I do not want these movies edited, but presuming that viewers today are primarily interested in entertainment or of finding a filmmaker's perspective, I think it's a lot to ask them to put up with the racist content.  Of course, my primary experience has been overt (Birth), though I have also encountered and commented on it in The Cheat and A Natural Born Gambler.

I think the Immortal Ephemera blog post gets it right.  I'm going to comment on it if I see it and it sticks with me.  I'm certainly going to point it out when it stands between me and my enjoyment of a film.  I'm obviously a couple of decades away from Union Depot, China Seas or The Toy Wife in my own project.  I'll be interested to see how I react to race in those and other films as I move through the decades.

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A Natural Born Gambler (1916)

Bert Williams(left) , the first black media star

Our first 1916 film is a short from the great comedian Bert Williams.  Bert is a member of a fraternal organization that meets in the back of a saloon.  Their leader Brother Scott preaches against the vice of gambling, but that doesn't stop Ben and the other members from breaking out the cards and die once Scott's back is turned.  When high stakes gambler Cicero Sampson shows up, Ben starts a poker game to relieve Sampson of his recent winnings.  But can Ben get away with the game before the police are onto him?

First off, this movie is incredibly racist (particularly the first half).  The title cards have the black cast speaking in an awful dialect and the men are portrayed as drunkards, gamblers and thieves.

That said, Williams really does a great job of bringing humanity to the role.  Williams was vaudeville performer who became famous in the late 1890s and early 1900s.  Biograph Company hired Williams to write, direct and star in his own films, the first time an African American had been granted such power in the film industry.

I think what I liked about the film was its subversive approach.  Williams, the lead, plays his part in blackface, exaggerating the fact that this a black starring performance.  The cast is almost universally black except for the police and the judge at the trial, all positions of authority.  However, Brother Scott, and not the judge, is clearly the ultimate authority figure here.

Ultimately, this is Williams' show.  His expressions throughout are amusing, but the ending long take of him in a jail cell pantomiming one more card game is both funny and sad.

It's a shame Williams did not get more work before his death in 1922. There's the spark of something great here.  You can't help but feel he could have been another Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton.  Recommend.

Watched on 123video.nl
Photo from Cruel and Unusual Comedy

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D.W. Griffith: Propaganda and Birth

A jury of his peers?

I already posted a brief review of The Birth of a Nation here.  However, the supposed "importance" of the film is worth a longer look.

For those who don't know, Birth is considered a crowning technical achievement in film, while also being amongst the most racist frames of celluloid ever produced.  I do not think you can separate the cinematic achievements from the story it serves.  Others feel differently.

Much critical attention is focused on the depiction of blacks in the latter half of the film.  However, Griffith begins building his argument much earlier in the film. 

The narrative of the film follows two families, representing the North and South.  The Northern family (The Stonemans, led by a congressman from Pennsylvania) visits their Southern friends (the Camerons) in Piedmont, South Carolina prior to the start of the Civil War.  Early in the film, Griffith depicts the slaves here as generally satisfied with their lot in life, even spontaneously breaking into a dance for the amusement of the guests.  The seeds of a romance between the eldest sons and daughters of the respective families.

Then the war comes.  Griffith sets his principal argument in a simple title card: "The power of the sovereign states, established when Lord Cornwallis surrendered to the individual colonies in 1781, is threatened by the new administration."  Everything would be okay if President Abraham Lincoln did not want to infringe on states' rights.


Both families' sons join their respective armies.  Even here, great care is taken to lionize the South. The troops have a ball to celebrate their early victories in the war.  They even carry in the Confederate flag from Bull Run and honor it.  The troops assemble with pomp and circumstance not shown in the North.


The youngest sons of each family meet on the battlefield and are killed.  The Camerons are selling every one of their possessions in order to support the war effort and the eldest Stoneman daughter Elsie is working in a military hospital for the North.  Sherman's march to Atlanta is depicted in red tint as though a literal hell on earth.  Women and children cower in fright.  The Cameron's Piedmont home is overrun by black Union troops. 


The eldest boys from the families meet in battle.  Ben Cameron (known for the rest of the film as the "little Colonel") leads his men over three Northern encampments before being wounded and captured.  Ben is shown as the courageous leader, overcoming the odds and even stopping to tend to an enemy soldier to the rousing approval of the enemy troops.  Ben is a leader.  He is honorable.  Contrast that with Phil Stoneman who sits in his trench attacking from a distance.


The North wins the war.  Griffith takes great care to point out he is attempting a historically accurate reenactment of the surrender. This is critical to the film's arguments later.  Ben is to be tried as a war criminal, but a subtle change happens with President Lincoln as a character.  Ben's mother pleads with the President to spare his life.  He acquiesces and Ben is saved, showing Lincoln's compassion for the South.  The man earlier described as the destroyer of state sovereignty is now cast as its greatest hope.

Representative Stoneman wants to grind the South under the North's boot heel.  Lincoln wants to take a more conciliatory approach, to Stoneman's dismay.

Lincoln is killed in what was my favorite sequence in the movie.  There is real drama as the moment approaches in Ford's theater.  Griffith again takes care in a title card to point out the historic accuracy he is attempting in his portrayal of the event.

The contrast in reactions from the Cameron and Stoneman clans is striking.  The South laments the loss of their friend and worries for the future.  Stoneman sees only his own ascension into power.

Stoneman uses the opportunity to anoint a mulatto named Silas Lynch as his political protege.  Any time Lynch is in a room with Elsie Stoneman, his lustful gaze becomes fixed on her.  He can't help himself; he's a half breed after all.  His lust gets the better of him.

Stoneman conspires to make Lynch the Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina.  The racism of the movie picks up tremendous steam here.  The blacks are seen on election day stuffing the ballot box and preventing the honorable white men like Dr. Cameron from casting a vote.

Then, in the most ridiculous scene in the whole move, Griffith introduces us to the newly elected state legislure through a title card that imbues the same historical accuracy on the scene as he did for the South's surrender and Lincoln's assassination.  If those were true accounts, so too must his portrayal of a black legislature.

And what does this portrayal of the legislature in session look like?  One of the black legislators sneaks a drink from a flask hidden in his desk. Another kicks off his shoes and props his bare feet on his desk as a colleague eating fried chicken looks on.  The legislature decides that its members should wear shoes so the barefoot man places his shoes back on his feet. the legislature then passes a law allowing interracial marriage. Immediately after that, they all look lustfully at the white women in the gallery.  Griffith has torn away any subtlety and revealed his true agenda: dehumanizing blacks and sowing fear amongst whites.

The Little Colonel is lost and frustrated.  Then, he sees some black children frightened by white children dressed as ghosts.  An idea hatches in Ben's head and the KKK is born.

After some scenes depicting the conflict between Lynch and the KKK, the next critical scene in the film unspools.  Gus, a lustful black man, follows the young Flora Cameron as she goes off to get water.  She runs from him and is chased to the top of a mountain.  Rather than succumb to Gus, she leaps to her death, her honor and innocence intact.  The Little Colonel witnesses the tragedy and cradles his sister as she lay dying.

The Klan rallies to find Gus and they try him (i.e., they drag him into a field and Ben identifies him as the killer.  Gus is killed and deposited on Lynch's doorstep.

Now, as we head toward the climax, two different storylines proceed to solidify Griffith's conclusions.  First, the Cameron's are fleeing the black soldiers loyal to Lynch.  They seek refuge in a cabin owned by two former Union soldiers. The soldiers protect the Camerons and even fight the black oppressors.  No subtlety here.  The Union soldiers act as proxies for the North, implying the apparent mistake they made in freeing the blacks.

Second, Lynch ends up alone with Elsie under his power. He proposes to her and she reacts in horror.  He vows to wed her anyway.  Then Elsie's father shows up. The eldest Stoneman at first approves Lynch's desire to marry a white woman, but the reaction turns to disgust when Lynch reveals he wishes to marry Elsie.  Of course, the Klan shows up to save the Stonemans after the leader of the emancipation movement realizes the error of his ways.

The final frames provide an icing on this cake of racist propaganda.  The blacks leave their homes to vote in the next election and the KKK is there on horseback, threatening them.  In a moment played for laughs, the blacks retreat back into their homes. Then we see the marriage of the eldest sons of each family to the daughter in the other family.  Ultimately, Jesus shows up to bless the entire affair. Seriously.  I am not making this up.  Jesus Christ is shown on film giving this all a big thumbs up.

So, the movie is basically this: Southern shown as honorable men and war heroes, blacks shown as threatening their way of life and killing innocence in the South (represented by Flora), the Klan is formed and saves the country.  At every turn, Griffith makes a choice to glorify the actions of the South and demonize those of the North and the blacks.  A simple example: as Ben courts Elsie, she immediately becomes smitten.  Phil on the other hand, is met with distrust by Margaret Cameron until the Klan triumphs at the end.  Even in the little details, Griffith is making the argument.

This is a propaganda film sold as entertainment at the time.  Yes, this sentiment existed then and sadly does today, but it was not the only viewpoint.  This movie was banned in several cities and severely edited in others.  To simply dismiss it as a product of its time is wrong.

If you are interested in propaganda film-making, here's a great example.  If you are interested in movies as entertainment?  Move along, nothing to see here.

Picture from Old School Reviews

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The Birth of a Nation (1915)

Yeah!  The KKK is here to save us!

Hailed as one of the first true masterpieces, The Birth of a Nation combines all of the techniques we have seen in D.W. Griffith's previous work to tell the story of America through the Civil War and subsequent Reconstruction.  The film has an epic scope (187 minutes) that incorporates cross-cutting shots, close-ups, camera tints and dolly shots to tell the tale.  The civil war battle scenes and Lincoln's assassination are particularly remarkable.

I hated this film.

Many praise this film as a masterpiece. In rushing to extol the film's virtues, critics perform an intellectually dishonest trick.  They separate the technical achievement of the film from the story it tells, discounting the point of the film in favor of discussions about camera work.

Think about that for a moment.  How many of us walk out of a theater today thinking, "That was the most offensive film ever screened, but the camera work was amazing!"?  We don't.  Because you cannot separate technique from the story it serves.

What is the film about?  It's a three-hour recruitment video for the Ku Klux Klan.  It's a propaganda film that recasts the North's entry into war to free the slaves as a misguided mistake that can only be rectified by whites forming their own army.  I'll deal with the film as propaganda in a separate article.

The basic story is of a southern man who fights valiantly in the war only to see his town and government overrun by blacks.  He creates his own southern army of whites dressed as ghosts to fight back against the encroachment of the former slaves on his life. The man (and his family and friends) find themselves at the center of a number of historical events throughout the running time of the movie.

There are certainly elements of the film to be admired.  I cannot remember seeing Lincoln's assassination on film, let alone at this level of detail and drama.  The war scenes are remarkable with the camera seeming to film from miles away, capturing the full scope of the battlefields.  Griffith here uses close-ups, iris shots and camera movements in ways that bring the audience into the plight of the characters. 

That makes the crimes of the story here worse. It's really well done, but it's a really well done racist portrayal of blacks.  It's not just propaganda, but very effective propaganda.  Blacks are filled with lust for white women.  They cheat to win elections.  They abuse their power and enter the hallowed halls of the state house barefoot, drinking and eating fried chicken.  Seriously.

Bringing Griffith's talent and vision to this tale is like Michaelangelo focusing his artistry on celebrating Goliath instead of David.  Griffith is the most influential moviemaker of his time with the biggest budget and a great cast and he chooses to share his admiration for the KKK.


I knew about the controversy with this film, but I was not prepared for how over-the-top racist this is.  I was expecting some subtlety.  There is none. This is three hours making an argument for a cause that is morally reprehensible.

Unless you are a film historian, I cannot recommend this.

Watched on Netflix Watch Instantly
Picture from Entertainment Weekly

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The Cheat (1915)

Fannie Ward's crazed sort-of heroine

The Cheat is another early film directed by Cecil B. DeMille.  A socialite woman has to spend and spend to keep up with her friends. Her husband cuts her off, but she hatches a plan to "borrow" money from her charity to play the stock market and make a quick buck.  Predictably, the plan goes awry and she is forced to take money from a Burmese businessman to replace the stolen cash.  But what will he want in return?  Can she ever pay off her debt?

I approached this one as a filler movie.  The only virtue it held as far as I knew was that it was available through Netflix Watch Instantly.

Of course, going in with no expectations, I ended up really enjoying it.

It has some issues, but there are two things in the film that kept me hooked.  First, DeMille's camera work is fantastic for its time.  In order to focus the audience's attention at an area of the screen, other directors used "iris shots," which blacked out all but a circular portion of the screen.  DeMille uses lighting here to accomplish the same effect.  It's the first time I have seen this in my movie watching from this era and the impact was striking.

Second, Sessue Hayakawa's portrayal of Haka Arakau brings a completely different style of acting that really grounds his performance as the central villain of the piece.  With subtle movements and glances, Hayakawa exudes menace and lust.  His charisma demands the audience's attention whenever he is on screen.  His style serves as a stark counterpoint to the over-the-top facial contortions that Fannie Ward brings to the Edith Hardy character.

It's a good thing too that Hayakawa is so good here as the ultimate message of the film is very racist in its portrayal of Asians and whites' reactions to them.  It would have been entirely possible for Arakau to be a caricature, but Hayakawa makes him feel like a fully fleshed out person. 

That said, The Cheat still demonstrates a racism that was prevalent in its time.  In exchange for the loan, Arakau demands Edith become his mistress. When her husband comes into some money, she tries to pay off the debt, but Arakau will have none of it. He becomes infuriated and, in the most violent scene I have seen in a film from the early 1900s, he attacks her and literally brands her as his property.

Edith quickly turns the tables and shoots Arakau.  Edith's husband finds the wounded man, deduces what had happened and takes the blame for his wife's actions.  As he is found guilty, Edith comes clean and shows the brand she received.  The crowd in the courtroom, incensed by the actions of Arakau, attempt to attack and lynch him.

The overall story arc here is pretty unsatisfying.  Edith is portrayed as selfish throughout the movie and her husband is a chump she plays like a fiddle.  When the plot resolves at the end, it's hard to muster up sympathy for her.  She stole money, agreed to become a mistress and attempted to kill a man, yet there is no consequence for any of her actions.

Despite the problems with the plot and themes, I would recommend this for DeMille's camera workand especially Hayakawa's amazing presence.  To think, 42 years later he would be nominated for an Oscar for Bridge on the River Kwai.

Watched on Netflix Watch Instantly
Picture from The Dancing Image

Random fact: The movie's villain was originally Japanese in the 1915 release.  This led to protests about the film's racism toward the Japanese.  When it was rereleased in 1918, the villain became Burmese.  Which goes to show, Burma needs a better lobbying organization.

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