Comparison of Two Films: Essay

Birth of a Nation uses its histrionic plot to show how tangled destinies of a southern and northern family before and after the Civil War. It willingly portrays southern blacks as spiteful and uncivil, the northern whites as crafty, dishonest, and conceited, and the film’s southern whites as anguish recurrent radical and erotic mortifications at the hands of white northerners and black southerners before factually being saved by the thoughtful, Ku Klux Klan. The film is divided to show the different aspects of those two sides during this historical time. During this time Africans were coming to America and it started the reconstruction on our country. D.W. Griffith made this film to show us the reality of racism at this point in time.

Comparing Aung San Suu Kyi’s excerpt from “In Quest with Democracy” and Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”

For the past few weeks, I have analyzed the storytelling style of the book and film Big Fish. The biggest difference I noticed was that I thought that the book focused more on the telling of Edwards inane stories, while the film was mostly centered around character development and relationships. I also think that while the book was very euphoric and felt like a children’s bedtime story, the film took a much more mystical and mysterious route, where a childish feel was dormant. Lastly, I thought that in the book the author just threw all the stories together and told them

In the film there are many videos and clips of African Americans being poorly mistreated by whites and police officers. One of the short films shown in the movie was titled “The Birth of a Nation.” In this short film there were scenes of a black man being pushed, punched, teased, etc. by white men just for the fun of it. There were also scenes of a white man raping a black women because blacks were looked down on as lesser than whites.

If a movie of this sort had such an emotional impact on me, it is no wonder people embraced these ideas back then. The use of new and popular media methods in those days was more than adequate in transferring the black inferiority ideas to the general public. Beginning at the early 19th century with the happy, dancing, toothless, drunken Negro with big, bold and white lips to the image of the mid 21st century African-American, the media has always used these images to convey inferiority. These images implied inherent traits in the black community. This whole community was represented in the new media as one who can not be collateralized and integrated in to society without being happily enslaved. Most of these images had great commercial values that made it all the more impossible for the rest of the nation not to embrace the African American stereotypes.

The history of African Americans in early Hollywood films originated with blacks representing preconceived stereotypes. D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film, Birth of a Nation, stirred many controversial issues within the black community. The fact that Griffith used white actors in blackface to portray black people showed how little he knew about African Americans. Bosley Crowther’s article “The Birth of Birth of a Nation” emphasizes that the film was a “highly pro-South drama of the American Civil War and the Period of Reconstruction, and it glorified the role of the Ku Klux Klan” (76). While viewing this film, one would assert that the Ku Klux Klan members are heroic forces that rescue white women from sexually abusive black men. Griffith

This movie did an excellent job portraying the time era in which the Civil War was taken place and depicts the emotions and pressures of war. The movie helped me to visual that time period in a better sense and to see the perspective of African American soldiers fighting in the Civil War. The movie showed a lot more in depth and personal feelings of the black soldiers during that time period. The movie portrayed what the black soldiers had to deal with as soldiers of the Union and it helped me to visual what I learned about the black regiments during the civil war. The film even showed the soldiers having to do manual labor and lute the southern towns and cities. It also showed how even though the black soldiers were on the same side as the white soldiers of the Union, the black soldiers were still treated as unequal and faced prejudice daily by the other white soldiers. It also showed the strong belief of many of the white Union soldiers that they fought for emancipation and the freedom of the

When the Sun was A God and With Fire and Sword are two films directed by Jerzy Hoffman, respectively in 2003 and 1999. The films were based on the historical events, illustrating the common matters of individuals’ desire to overpower others with wealth, power, and control in order to take over the throne and land. Both films took place in different settings – Piast dynasty era and Khmelnytsky Uprising era – but they do share some similarities and differences. The reason for why I chose these two films to compare and contrast was due to the fact that they share certain aspects that set the films alike and apart from one another. The aspects are: greed, friendship, loyalty, women, and love.

Many elements of the film Life is Beautiful can compare to the Bible. For example, Guido, the main character, acts as a Christ figure in that he saves his son, Joshua from the evils of the Holocaust. Another example that compares with the Bible is the tank that is promised to Joshua. Finally, Guido’s death eventually saves Joshua from his own death. Such examples in the movie are comparable to examples in the Bible.

The Polanski film Death and the Maiden is a wonderful and intelligent interpretation of Ariel Dorfman's human rights problem play. Polanski has produced, in this film, an exceptional piece of direction, in which his own personal, emotional input is evident. The main theme of the play is an extremely personal one for both playwright (and scriptwriter) and director. Both Dorfman and Polanski have had to face and flee the horrors of dictatorship and human rights violations: Dorfman in Chile, under General Augusto Pinochet, and Polanski in Poland under the Nazis. But despite this similarity in past experience, significannot

The misunderstood subculture of music that many have come to know as “hip-hop” is given a critical examination by James McBride in his essay Hip-Hop Planet. McBride provides the reader with direct insight into the influence that hip-hop music has played in his life, as well as the lives of the American society. From the capitalist freedom that hip-hop music embodies to the disjointed families that plague this country, McBride explains that hip-hop music has a place for everyone. The implications that he presents in this essay about hip-hop music suggest that this movement symbolizes and encapsulates the struggle of various individual on

Ku Klux Klan also has a main role in this movie. They are very strong together. They are cold blooded murders and just want to get rid of the black people. They have a high status in society, mainly because no one has the courage to do anything to them.

The original 1933 King Kong was created as a movie: to convey a story and entertain and audience. Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake took the foundation for King Kong and expanded upon it in almost every way in order to “make again” the amazement of the original for a modern audience. Audiences received the original King Kong very well. The stop motion sequences of Kong were amazing for their time and the movie grossed $90,000 in its opening weekend. In order to bank upon its success again sequels were made and then in 1976 a remake was made to improve upon the original. Paramount updated the movie to color, changed the story, and cast Jeff Bridges, a well-known actor of the time, as the lead. Although the movie received mixed reviews, it did

On March 3, 1915 the movie The Birth of a Nation was released at the Liberty Theatre in New York City. This film was financed, filmed, and released by the Epoch Producing Corporation of D.W. Griffith and Harry T. Aitken. It was one of the first films to ever use deep-focus shots, night photography, and to be explicitly controversial with the derogatory view of blacks.

There were many scenes in the film that were meaningful to the theme of racism. One important scene is at the Gettysburg battle location. Here, Coach Boone makes an impacting speech to the players on overcoming