On June 23, I’ll be back at the Plaistow Library to accompany the silent film America, made by D. W. Griffith. It will start at 6 PM and run about 2 hours and 20 minutes. Reservations are encouraged so the library knows how many people to expect.

The show is part of the events observing the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. There will also be a presentation on the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 9, held by the Plaistow Historical Society. As I’m writing, not much information is available on it, but it should be interesting.

Griffith is famous (or infamous) for his 1915 film Birth of a Nation, which presents the Civil War and glorifies the KKK. America, released in 1924, is about the American Revolution. Both films have spectacular battle scenes and stories focusing on individuals. Both have a mix of accurate history and made-up stuff. America culminates in a made-up battle at a made-up place, but the early parts of the Revolution (Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill) are presented fairly accurately. The film doesn’t have the same level of racial problems as the earlier film. There is a black servant, but he isn’t mocked or caricatured (though I’m pretty sure a while actor played him). Natives who fight for the British are called “savages.” Things like that happen in century-old movies.

The chief villain is a Tory rather than anyone from Britain. Lionel Barrymore portrays Walter Butler, a real-life Loyalist officer, as a sadistic schemer with an evil grin, which he wasn’t in reality. The British regulars are generally shown as brave soldiers. I wonder if Griffith remembered that the maker of the 1917 Spirit of ’76 got a long prison sentence for making an “anti-British” movie when Britain was our ally in World War I. It may have seemed safer to show Tories doing nasty things. Even as it was, the British Board of Film Censors banned the film.

The story of the war is intertwined with a love story; a Patriot is in love with the daughter of a man who remains loyal to Britain. Both of them prove honorable in the end.

As usual, I’ll provide original, live music for the film.