The Battle

The actual battle scenes here are fairly short. They give a decent sense of a large scale without a really huge number of extras, but the sense of what's happening gets very muddled as things go on. I think I liked how the send-off dance and parade at the beginning was shot better.

Birth of a Nation was on his mind already. This alternate Union-side view clearly didn't compel him as much (the culture of the CSA is racist trash, but very cinematic).So here we have a more-or-less politically neutral film with a plot that demands focus on one soldier's role in the madness, but a director without any interest in the necessary intimacy.

Kinda hard to follow what's going on, but decent otherwise. At least Griffith shows the Union as sympathetic this time and isn't ridiculously racist.

The battle is well-choreographed but poorly framed, which shrinks the scope of the action considerably. Perfecting his technique for The Birth of a Nation.