Births and Blossoms.

These are my notes from yesterday. I'll probably do a more organized post later.

We started Broken Blossoms with 20 mins left of an 88 minute film. The context was that a young white girl, who had been the victim of domestic abuse, has been saved by a chinese man. So wow, through me into a boiling pot of early 20th century culture soup.

She wakes up and they begin to interact. Their relationship moves fast, and is accompanied by an ever evolving score.

There's a full symphony at work behind the piece, it features sweeping piano movements and segments dominated by simple woodwind melodies. A few times the music reminds me of a wind up ballerina. I think this film could be compared to that little metal roller that creates the tunes. Every element of the film is simple in itself. There's no grand shots or even effects, but it all comes together sweetly.

Every so often there is a text slide that explains things in an poetic style that separates it from synopsis. I don't feel that the messages are needed as much as they're used. The action in each shot seems more than expressive enough. The story isn't hard to follow at all even though it's silent.

They really build the chinese shop owner's character as a kind and wonderful person, but because of the lecture I keep thinking about people getting Shanghai'd so i expect her to be eating a heroin cooky or something.

What was the quote? Battling hates nothing more than people who weren't born in his country? Tyson would be proud of a quote like that. Boxing used to be pretty awesome though. I also like how the hue changes from lavender to yellow between the two scenes, and the antagonist music is more than up to par. If I ever need to make a bad guy plot montage I know where to steal the tunes from.

I heard that the leader of the KKK is called the Grand Imperial Wizard. I won't be able to get that out of my head throughout the whole viewing of Birth of a Nation. Again the hue in the picture is changed for different scenes. This time there's red though...sweet.

This film reminds me that you can use triumphant marching music for any occasion. At times it doesn't match the shot at all.

Did they really paint that many extras faces or did they use at least a few actual black people?

Did the white girls father get stabbed in the heart by the poorly paint black man? This action is much harder to follow. I got it all figured out by the 1812 overture though. It's a white supremacists dream. Black people rise up to terrorize whites because of their primitive nature and the Klan shows up just in time for a fully justified massacre.

The irony here is, while I don't recall a situation where black Union soldiers terrorized southern whites, I can think of at least one or two situations in which innocent black people were terrorized and murdered in the south.