How many here have seen the film?... I'm just curious.
Wilson showed the film in the White House and loved it... Personally, anything that glorifies the KKK is a load of crap.
That's just plain stupid. Would be similar to hating Wagner b/c he railed against the Jews constantly or (fill-in-the-blank) 20th century American composer b/c they were openly homosexual.
Basically, Birth of a Nation is the film that created Hollywood, not to mention pioneering about half of the film techniques presently in use worldwide nowadays. In order to call oneself a "film buff", Birth of a Nation is really one of the few movies you have to at least see once.
I have seen the movie (two times now) and regardless of what you think of the subject matter (and the fact that the movie helped in rebirth of the KKK during the early 1920s), it is probably one of the 10 greatest films ever made - the story is compelling, the romantic subplot bewitching, and the fight sequences look completely realistic (even by today's standards).
He wasn't quoted in movie, he made a quote about a movie. The movie was The Birth of a Nation which was essencially a pro-KKK/shamlessly racist and pro-southern "version" of the historical events of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Wilson was quoted as saying "The only terrible thing about it is that it is all so horribly true." Which, of course, it wasn't, but it is proof of the fact, if any was needed, that Wilson was, deep down, a racist who supported the Klan.
Actually, KucinichforPrez is correct here. D.W. Griffith placed a quote in the film from Wilson's book "The History of the American People", written while Wilson was President of Princeton University, which read:
"The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation...till at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern Country."
Well Sam, I have seen the movie a couple of times... And no matter what the plot or how good the film was according to critics, or even cinematically, the fact that it launched a rebirth of the Ku Kluxers is more than enough reason for me to think it was garbage. The modern Klan was never anything more than a bunch of Halloween costume wearing rascists who, as you well know, terrorized anyone different from them. The film may have been a cinematic masterpiece, but it's role in reorganizing the terroristic organization known as the Ku Klux Klan, leaves me sick to my stomach.
People today complain about Al Queda recruitment videos. How in the blue hell was this any different? Just because it was an American film, and it used revolutionary cinematic acheivements that would evolve and lead to what Hollywood is today, that doesn't make it an innocent film. Maybe being from a northern state, I'm not as sympathetic to the film as a southerner would be.
