Birth of a Nation (1915, dir. D.W. Griffith)

I have to say this film ends on a surprising high, all its controversies notwithstanding. Having said that, I guess next up should be Mississippi Burning or Malcolm X, just for some counterbalance.

Perhaps just one thing I could add to the reams already written on Birth: This must surely be one of the oddest ways to get a kiss from a girl - namely, giving Lillian Gish a bird to to cuddle and then to try and catch her lips while she repeatedly smacks them on the bird's beak (?!).

But then I've never understood why people would kiss dogs either, so maybe there's something about kissing birds which similarly fails me.

Finally, I thought I would reproduce this quote, apparently from James Agee on D.W. Griffith:

To watch his work is like being witness to the beginning of melody, or the first conscious use of the lever or the wheel; the emergence, coordination and first eloquence of language; the birth of an art: and to realize that this is all the work of one man.

It is wonderful, isn't it?