Brownlow is second to none on this subject.

Good for you. I guess it'll do if you've got nothing else...

I saw a funny caption once that said: When a man brags about his ancestors, it only goes to prove, that the best part of him is buried. I like your comment.

What an Anglo Saxon name, i'm guessing he had slave owners in his family too. Shameful.

@@humanliberationfront6627 Not that I know of.

Then by extension, he's a racist and as such, he'll need to register with the BLM, NAACP, not to mention make apologies for his white privilege, and donate $ to atleast three black causes. In addition, he'll need to take a mandatory race sensitivity course (at the Black Panther Events Center in Oakland). If he doesn't do these things he'll be leaving himself open to protests by the BLM at both his home and place of employment. It's tough being white.

another racist piece of shit, you whities won't ever change...

Are you for real?

He DID write a book: Adventures with D.W. Griffith is the title. Get it and read it-one of the most insightful and entertaining books on film you'll ever read. Not sure it is in print at present, but good used copies are available.

april 2020

May 2020.

I think Parts Two and Three are available on KZfaq.

he is one of the biggest hollywood racist ever, and his "birth of a nation" is hilariously racist, i hope he is rotting in hell..

Thank the Lord for that.

I'm sure he meant the Los Angeles Symphony. Give the old guy a break.

@@jamesmarshall8836 I can't. There is no Los Angeles Symphony that I can find. Maybe Brown meant the Lompoc 12.

These were different times... grow up already

@@princeedmunddukeofedinburg it wasn't that long ago

Almost every white person who lived in the 1910s will deny racism in the film.

This retro-shaming of famous and historical people has got to stop. It's so naive. To expect someone who was born in the 19th century or even earlier to have lived by 21st century social norms and standards is preposterous. Those people were products of their own time, as are we. Get over it.

​@@L1623VPIt's maddening.

This man is no master of the films A bigot And a fool and a idiotic person

His movie "A Brith of a Nation" promoted the KKK and help them get in power, they had more people joining after this movie and I cannot respect such a horrible monster 😡 fuck him.

6 PM and no new Year's day is not working for me anymore she is doing it again

@@carteranimationz2897 I'll drink to that.

It’s scary just thinking of how our oppressors thought of us,the humans they held as slaves,Evil at its finest

*else

Yeah, people are way too kind to this movie.

Why don't we just bring in year zero into America so we can put an end to the relentless crying, whining, anger and hatred from those who cannot deal with and accept history.

@@mclovin8739 I don't think we're the ones not accepting history here bub

mr. beckley, i agree racism on all forms is terrible. and from a modern eye "birth of a nation" is unwatchable. but from a historical view, birth, mien kamf, and other "works" are important, on what NOT to do. d.w. was a show man and like all showmen he knew that "shock means money". yes he romantized the confedercy. yes the subject is appaling. but most of the silent is chocked full of racism. should we burn them all? no.. what we need to do, is have a healthy conversation and understand that the time is of a era not enlightened. and juxtapose with a similar film of the modern era and how we improved. birth of a nation, the propaganda films of ww2, are important there are technical innavations in these films that are used to this day. that is why birth of a nation is important. i mean no ill will or meaness to my post.

I can enjoy the artistry in all those films.

You speak of Jesus yet glorify a racist who help promote a evil group of people the KKK who gain more members and power after his flim " A Brith of Nation" Im sure Jesus would not be pleased with this.

@@carteranimationz2897 I'm sure He wouldn't, considering the fact that Jesus was a Jew, and the second version of the Ku Klux Klan hated Jews as well as black people.

To all the haters: Wasn't it Jesus, whose name you invoke so easily, who said "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"? Bunch of stuck up Pharisees

War propaganda like Rambo cost far more lives

The fact that most of the black characters were played by white actors was mentioned in this video.

I once rented a VHS tape of Gance's film, "Napoleon." It was a rather extraordinary movie, especially at the end, where the screen was split three ways to show three scenes at the same time.

I'm with you. I've studied silent films for over 50 years and while I acknowledge Griffiths amazing technical innovations, I'm never moved by his films. They always seem so preachy- including in the racism of a Birth of a Nation.

No Gance without Griffith buddy . . . Let's all get our history straight yfjos

Griffith was excellent at self promotion.

Your racist ass is a joke. Lol

@@Oldnoname mate, you need to grow some balls.

@@mclovin8739 I'm not your mate.

?

Yes true. And both films were racist in nature.

The Eternal Jew is a good watch.

The accusations of racism were quite well founded, has to be said. But racism is back en vogue as we all know.

He had a couple of hits and then fell into sentimental schmaltz, which he never outgrew - times changed he DWG did not

LOOK AT CONGRESS.....

INFAMOUS IS THE CORRECT TERM FOR THIS DEVIL

@@walterjohnson9082 ok KAREN

@BadRobot and its coming from Black people now..roles reversed

Right on Brenda - I wish people would stop making excuses for our grandparents' racism - let's put it in a museum - amen!

Chris Allen I never like to talk much about the plot when it comes to Birth of a Nation because to some it can be a sensitive topic. I personally had no problem with the plot as it wasn't intended as racist in any way. Griffith was raised in the south and therefore of course he would have been raised to support things like that. Technically, it was absolutely incredible. The techniques used were groundbreaking and he set the standard for modern Hollywood

Chris Allen we? You must have had it so hard living with the weakened economy of the south during reconstruction. You ever think about going to the Guinness World records for oldest man still alive?

Does your "we of the South" include the non-white citizens "you" terrorized and dehumanized? Or do they not count? If not, why not?

You must be NUTS! "The Birth Of A Nation" did NOT truly portray how life in the Post-Civil War South was. To start with, it depicted the Reconstruction period as being totally punitive and gave the impression that it only took part in the South. But that's not the way it really was. Some of the Western and Midwestern states also suffered damage during the war, so they needed some reconstructing themselves. The film makes it seem like only white Southerners suffered during Reconstruction. Perhaps there's some truth to that, but it wasn't as bad as the movie claimed it was. Besides, it was actually the BLACK PEOPLE OF THE SOUTH that suffered the most. While Amendments 13-15 of the United States Constitution were supposed to protect the rights of the former slaves, the white people of the South, brought up with the idea of "White Supremacy" and the implied inferiority of non-white persons, were determined to ensure that blacks would be systematically deprived of their rights, or at least, never get a chance to enjoy them. This the whites did by first denying blacks the right to vote. To accomplish this, they used all sorts of sneaky tricks, like, for example, the Poll Tax, whereby everyone who went to the polls to vote had to pay a tax first, which the white establishment figured would keep blacks from the voting booths because most of them were too poor to pay the tax. Unfortunately, this idea affected poor WHITE PEOPLE as well as the blacks, so it was abandoned. Another trick to keep blacks from voting was the rigged literacy tests. In most cases, Southern authorities had two different tests of one's literacy, one for white people, in which the questions were basically easy to answer, and one for black people, which asked questions that were absolutely IMPOSSIBLE TO ANSWER, such as the following: "How many windows are there in the White House in Washington, DC?" "How many drops of water are there in the Mississippi River?" "How many bubbles are there in a bar of soap?" WTF??? WERE THESE SOUTHERN WHITES KIDDING? EVEN THE SMARTEST PERSON IN THE WORLD COULDN'T ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS! But probably the most effective way of disqualifying black people from the voting process was the Grandfather Clause, which stated that an individual could only vote if his GRANDFATHER had voted as well. This, as might have been expected, cancelled out all voting rights for blacks, since their grandfathers were all SLAVES, and who ever heard of slaves voting? Of course, if all that didn't work, there was also the option of using terror and violence to scare the ex-slaves, not only from the polls, but from exercising any other constitutional right or privilege. This was done by secret societies, the most famous (or infamous, if you will) one being the Ku Klux Klan, who were NOT the "heroes" that Mr. Griffith's film portrayed them as. It was all a myth invented by white racists in the South who couldn't get over the fact that they lost the Civil War, that their slaves were now free and supposedly protected by constitutional Amendments 13-15, and that Northern authorities were being sent down South to make sure that the rights of the blacks were being upheld. So the Southerners created this false idea that the they, not the blacks, were the innocent ones who were being persecuted, that anarchy prevailed throughout the Southern states because of the blacks and their white friends, the Carpetbaggers, who intended to "destroy Southern civilization," and that white women, in particular, were in constant danger of being raped by lust-crazed "black savages." (In reality, just the opposite was the case; most of the "anarchy" was caused by whites attacking and terrorizing the blacks, often by starting race riots in the streets; also, there were MORE CASES OF BLACK WOMEN BEING SEXUALLY ASSAULTED BY WHITE MEN THAN CASES OF WHITE WOMEN BEING RAPED BY BLACK MEN, AND SOME OF THESE WHITE RAPISTS OF BLACK WOMEN WERE KLANSMEN!) Anyway, all these phony stories about the Reconstruction period South were later repeated by Southern revisionist historians. (including future U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, who wrote an American history book that contained a passage full of these Reconstruction myths: they would later be referred to in intertitles in "The Birth Of A Nation.") These same historians also created the legend of the Confederate cause being a noble, heroic, and justified one, albeit a "Lost Cause." (This was the title of a book written a few years after the end of the Civil War.) This Confederate mythology soon became the main theme of a series of Pro-Confederacy, Pro-Klan novels written by the Reverend Thomas A. Dixon, Jr, which, in turn, were the stories on which "The Birth Of A Nation" was based. (Ironically, Reverend Dixon's books were considered far more racist than the movie, especially the one called "The Clansman: A Historical Romance Of The Ku Klux Klan." Dixon himself had once appeared in a stage version of the book, which even a Southern theater critic dismissed as "a fairy tale.") So you see, neither Dixon's novels nor Griffith's film were as historically accurate as you think they were.

The south deserved it for their cowardice and disgusting treatment of fellow humans. When they were killed and beaten during the Civil war it was what they sowed for themselves. And this movie wasn't an impartial look at the times, it was a propaganda piece for the KKK from a die hard racist.

THANKS MY FRIEND

Why, because he was racist? Let me tell you that he grew up with slaves, so it's natural that he had those thoughts.

@@redmist206 Sure, just like it was "natural" for Adolf Hitler to have Anti-Semitic feelings, because he grew up in a society that was already suspicious and fearful of the Jews.

How so???

BS

Exactly, She is a weak minded Griffith carpet bagger.

This retro-shaming of famous and historical people has got to stop. It's so naive. To expect someone who was born in the 19th century or even earlier to live by 21st century social norms and standards is preposterous. Those people are products of their own time, as are we. Get over it.

@@L1623VP you think she isn't being entirely delusional in this footage? "Mr Griffith loved the black people!" This movie is responsible for the KKK revival.

Snowflake

Your post is redundant, because you used the words "this country" twice in the same sentence, when only once was enough.

@@michaelpalmieri7335 Happy?

@@michaelpalmieri7335 This dude is a d*

@@durablegoods4sure Just a minute here, @D.G.! I never said that I loved D.W. Griffith, or that everything preceding the release of "The Birth Of A Nation" and afterwards was "totally acceptable," or that I "endorsed" this particular film, or that I supported Jim Crow segregation, or anything else that promotes racism and discrimination. Quite the contrary, I'm as liberal as Martin Luther King. I don't approve of any sort of bigotry or prejudice, nor do I condone the actions, philosophy, or even the existence of organized hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, or the Neo-Nazis, or the original Nazis for that matter. I'm well aware of the damage and harm that prejudice causes, and of the injustices that black people and other minority groups have suffered in this country, which is supposed to believe in the ideal that "all men are created equal." I know of these things, because I've read a lot about them and was shocked at the way some people could, or still can, victimize the innocent simply because of their religion, their race, skin color, nationality, etc. Like a lot of people in this country, my parents, my sister, and I watched the two "Roots" miniseries, and realized that the days of slavery and segregation were far worse than what I've heard and read about in school. Another thing: I am NOT a "late immigrant"! I'm not ANY KIND of an immigrant! Just having an Italian name doesn't mean I was born in Italy. I am, in fact, a DESCENDANT of Italian and Sicilian immigrants, but like most of my relatives (including my sister and my parents), I was born right here, in the United States of America, in the Bronx in New York City, to be precise. You accuse me of being a bigot, but you think like a bigot when you assume that I'm a foreigner because my last name sounds and looks foreign. I'm surprised you didn't ask me if I or my family are connected to the Mafia, which we aren't! I don't know where you got the crazy notion that I "loved" D.W. Griffith, or that I approved of the racist themes of "The Birth Of A Nation." Is it because I corrected the grammar you used in your previous post denouncing the "damage to this country" that Griffith did, where you used the words "this country" twice in the same sentence, when once was enough? Were you angry at me for saying that your sentence was redundant, so angry that after you corrected your mistake (yes, I noticed it), you felt the need to answer me with unnecessary sarcasm by sending another post asking me "Are you happy?" Is THAT what's ticking you off? I've corrected the grammar used by other KZfaq commenters many times, and it did annoy some of them, but others have actually THANKED ME for taking the time to inform them of their grammatical errors and/or misspellings, and of course, I usually send them a post saying "You're welcome." These people were obviously grateful to me for helping them with their sentences. Why can't you be equally grateful, instead of getting snooty with me, and then calling me a "d***head" and accusing me of being a racist just because I noticed a flaw in a sentence from a post that just happened to be about a man who directed a movie showing black people as monsters and glorifying the KKK? Like anyone who speaks of D.W. Griffith, I do consider him a cinematic genius who practically gave birth to the modern motion picture industry, but I DON'T, AND NEVER HAVE, approved of the distorted and racist version of American history that was depicted in "The Birth Of A Nation." Although a movie masterpiece, it is STILL, AND ALWAYS WILL BE, A BLATANT PIECE OF RACIST PROPAGANDA that increased hatred against blacks, made white audiences believe the fake history that was being shown, and may, or may not, have inspired the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan, thus ushering in a new era of racial and religious prejudice and violence! That's all I have to say.

What does his being a Non-Jew have to do with anything?

​@@michaelpalmieri7335Has a lot to do with him being run out of Hollywood.