The story of the massacre of an Indian village, and the ensuing retaliation.
Massacre, Le Massacre
PortugalM/12
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Portugal
UK
USA
So here the man who one year later would show an Indian massacre as the result of drunken, puppy-eating savages gives us the inciting incident of an apparently unmotivated cavalry attack on a quiet Indian village, an indiscriminate slaughter of men, women and children. The camera lingers first on the chief's anguish as he watches, high on a hillside, his people being murdered and sympathizes with his vow for revenge. Then it gives us an extended shot of a woman and her baby, lying dead in the dust while soldiers troop around in the background.
It's a peculiar kind of racism Griffith has, mirroring Hollywood's own. It lacks conviction: perfectly willing to engage in a semblance of empathy when screen…
1912 is a pretty fascinating year for Griffith - less experimentation (so from a contemporary context, less excitement) but a clearer sense of what he distinctly wants to artistically - I mean this in the sense of a structural level, and in a way I suppose that this is where (and this film particularly) Griffith really locks down the structural balances of narrative filmmaking. Though it's not as exciting or as interesting as something like Corner in Wheat, for example, this might be the most sophisticated up to this point - (I may need a fact check on this but - it seems like it's also his longest up to this point?) Anyways - what strikes the most isn't really…
Monte Hellman's entire career was built on this. The first fatalistic western.
fucking rip off
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
A scout asks a girl if she'll be his wife and go with him west. He realizes, sadly, that she loves another. Another man comes to propose to her. The girl and her beau are married, and the scout, heartbroken, goes to rejoin the army.
Two years later, the husband and wife decides to join a wagon train west. (They have a new baby.) Meanwhile, the army, with the scout, attack an Indian settlement. Women and children are massacred.
The wagon train arrives in the "danger zone" and is escorted by the cavalry. The young husband has to leave his wife on urgent business. The scout keeps an eye on the young wife. The wagon train halts for the night.…
"Hey, at the end of the first reel, didn't we go into an Indian village for no reason and shoot everybody till they died? Maybe that wasn't such a good idea."
Payback's a bitch.
DWG is oddly reticent about editorializing, for once, but the facts speak for themselves.
Large-scale storytelling, seems like a milestone in that respect -- Griff-n-Bitzer's strategy of choice is to film from a mountaintop so a single shot can contain the whole length and breadth of a valley. When they descend to the particular, not every shot is equally successful at conveying the diffuseness and scope of his battlefield.
the closest Griffith would come to exploitation cinema??
THE VALLEY OF DEATH
Extremely bombastic and engaging Griffith short! Everything about The Massacre is this brewing explosive demonstration of brutal Americana in the most genuine and jaw-dropping way. Any time Griffith deals with political issues, typically revolving around the Native American community, but this was surprisingly tasteful and beautiful.
Would Recommend!
O Oeste americano como memória histórica, antes de ser estabelecido como mito. Griffith já tinha conhecimento das contradições de uma região construída não a base de duelos entre dois homens, mas de milhares, corpos que sangraram sob o solo de uma nova civilização. Civilização essa que é colocada em xeque por Griffith, afinal qual a razão de retratar um massacre perpetuado pelos brancos como o ponto inicial de violência? Qual a razão de mostrar corpos empilhados de forma crua e realista? Poucos cineastas ousaram mostrar bebês indígenas sendo mortos juntos de suas mães. O caráter sentimental filmado se concentra exatamente nessa relação materna, é o que resta de inocência em um grupo de colonos composto por pistoleiros, missionários e apostadores.…
David W Griffith hace una de sus películas más violentas, donde nos muestra montañas de cadáveres, incluyendo bebes.
La historia de como la caballería de Estados Unidos masacra un poblado indio sin que estos les provocasen de ninguna manera, solo buscando la gloria belicista; para después mostrar una escena de acción espectacular en la que los indios supervivientes en busca de venganza atacan unas caravanas de colones. Significativo del detalle del círculo que sirve como metáfora de la historia terrible de Estados Unidos.
Insofar as Griffith shorts I've seen before, this represents a significant shift from formal acuity to complex set-pieces. The juxtaposition of images and narrative cross-cutting is the sine qua non of his "race against the clock" crop of shorts such as The Sealed Room, The Lonely Villa, The Girl and Her Trust et al. Here, the emphasis instead rests on large scale action, often shot from a distance to lend a genuine sense of scope. I have yet to see either The Birth of a Nation or Intolerance but envision a continuation of this methodology within Griffith's two most famous works.
The politics of The Massacre has less clarity. Griffith introduces a doomed Native American mother and child to echo…
Ne mérite aucune louange. Racisme du début à la fin et racisme volontaire fait par un raciste. 5 minutes ça suffit pour voir la stupidité de sa bouse.
