The Birth of a Nation (1915)

D.W. Griffith's landmark movie epic The Birth of a Nation  from 1915 legitimized the movie industry in the United States. Birth was one of the first what we now call "feature" length movies. It ran a little over three hours and was shown as a roadshow engagement instead of the penny arcades where many watched movies in those days. The movie was the first to be shown in the White House - occupied at that time by Woodrow Wilson. Griffith earned the title "Father of film" due to the success and technical achievements of the movie. But the subject matter is seen today as racist and many historians have ambivalent feelings about the movie's huge success. Yes, on one hand Griffith set the standard for innovative film-making in his day; however, one cannot forget the awful caricatures of the African-Americans in the film, played by whites with obvious black face and what we now know and have - or should - a deep shame about: thousands of lynchings against African-Americans for sport during the early 1900's. There is a lynching in the movie. To watch Birth is to admire Griffith laying the ground work in editing, story structure, camera movements, and lighting for future movie makers; conversely it is also a time capsule of an era when the portrayal of the Klu Klux Klan so captured the imagination of certain moviegoers that not long after the terrorist group, for that is what they were, was revitalized, not only in the south but the midwest as well. Birth was a powerful recruiting tool: it fed the imagination of a glorified past when after the civil war southerners had to fight back against the carpetbaggers and Yankees who let African-Americans run wild, i.e., basically let them be the equal of whites. The thought of being molested by a African-American man sends one white woman over the cliff literally in the movie. Of course sexual assault was more prevalent the other way around: white men attacking African-American women. So one has to watch Birth for the art and not the message.

This quote from James Agee: "The most beautiful single shot I have seen in any movie is the battle charge in 'The Birth of a Nation.' I have heard it praised for its realism, but it is also far beyond realism. It seems to me to be a realization of a collective dream of what the Civil War was like..."

A Fool There Was (1915)

A silent movie from the WWI era, A Fool There Was marks the debut appearance of the movies' first sex symbol character played by Theda Bara. With her long, dark hair and huge eyes lined with kohl, Bara destroys a successful married man's life in this not particularly distinctive silent. If anything, the footage of 1914 New York City is the most fascinating part of the movie; there are several outdoor scenes with the public observing filming. 

The story is pure Victorian melodrama: woman is the downfall of man. A Fool There Was began in 1909 as a Broadway play starring Virginia Pearson and written by Porter Emerson Brown. Pearson was almost cast in this movie version after Valeska Suratt and Madlaine Traverse were considered.

Shot like many silent movies during this period in Ft. Lee, New Jersey, A Fool There Was is one of only a handful of Theda Bara movies in existence. Like a good many silent movies, they were either destroyed or simply eroded in storage. In Bara's case, a huge fire in 1937 at the old Fox Film Studios in Ft. Lee, where she shot most of her movies, burned down making an ash heap of the original film negatives. 

Known as a "vamp", short for vampire, Bara's career, like many sex-symbols after her, lasted just a decade, ending around 1925. Before starring in A Fool There Was, she had appeared in several bit parts on the stage and movies. Bara blamed over-zealous press agents and studio publicity for creating a false, negative persona as a man-eater who was an "Egyptian-born daughter of a French actress and an Italian sculptor who spent her early years in the Sahara Desert under the shadow of the sphinx, then moved to France to become a  actress" (IMDb).

She was actually born as Theodosia Goodman in 1885 to parents of Jewish heritage in Cincinnati. 

In the early years of movies, many moviegoers at the nickelodeon believed the actors were the characters they played, and Bara was accosted or heckled at when she was in public; according to her, she was even refused service in restaurants.

In 1949, a planned movie version of her life was announced to star Betty Hutton(!!) by Paramount Pictures; those plans never materialized. 

In reality Bara was married from 1921 until her death from abdominal cancer in 1955 to former silent movie director Charles Brabin. Like Greta Garbo, James Dean, and Marilyn Monroe, Theda Bara's screen persona will remain forever young, frozen in time on celluloid.