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On 6/26/20 3:12 PM, John A Imani via Marxism wrote:
I recently saw for the first time Hattie McDaniels' acceptance speech
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7t4pTNZshA> for winning the Acad Award
for Best Supporting Actor. It was as magnificent as it was short,
emotional and uplifting. It was as grand as her portrayal of 'Mammy' in
the film wherein I have never seen an actor so embody the conscious as well
as the subconsciousness of the character portrayed. Do we burn that film
as some have burned books?
JAI
These are complex questions. When James Agee was the film critic for the
NY Times, he wrote a tribute to D.W. Griffith when he died in 1947. His
"Birth of a Nation" was much worse than "Gone With the Wind". Agee
understood what a great director Griffith was (so was Lenin
Riefenstahl), but was far too lenient to him politically.
James Agee:
Today, The Birth of it Nation is boycotted or shown piecemeal; too many
more or less well-meaning people still accuse Griffith of having made it
an anti-Negro movie. At best, this is nonsense, and at worst, it is
vicious nonsense. Even if it were an anti-Negro movie, a work of such
quality should be shown, and shown whole. But the accusation is unjust.
Griffith went to almost preposterous lengths to be fair to the Negroes
as he understood them, and he understood them as a good type of
Southerner does. I don’t entirely agree with him; nor can I be sure that
the film wouldn’t cause trouble and misunderstanding, especially as
advertised and exacerbated by contemporary abolitionists; but Griffith’s
absolute desire to be fair, and understandable, is written all over the
picture; so are degrees of understanding, honesty, and compassion far
beyond the capacity of his accusers. So, of course, are the salient
facts of the so-called Reconstruction years.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/dw-griffith-remembered/
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