Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Posted 2:59 PM by Gene

Three days after writing a silly blurb for a silly show, Terry Teachout redeems himself:

The Birth of a Nation progresses with the slow-motion solemnity of a funeral march. Even the title cards stay on the screen for three times as long as it takes to read them. Five minutes after the film started, I was squirming with impatience, and after another five minutes passed, I decided out of desperation to try an experiment: I cranked the film up to four times its normal playing speed and watched it that way. It was overly brisk in two or three spots, most notably the re-enactment of Lincoln’s assassination (which turned out to be quite effective—it’s the best scene in the whole film). For the most part, though, I found nearly all of The Birth of a Nation to be perfectly intelligible at the faster speed.

Posterity is a harsh taskmaster. Isn't this the masterwork Woody Wilson said was "history writ (or wrought, or wrote) with lightning"? More like history writ with a damp firecracker on a rainy day. People will say similar things about HERR DOKTOR SONDHEIM a few decades hence, and more than a few other modern favorites. Here is yesterday's sensation, reduced through its hopeless flaws to a pile of rubble and ash.