U.S. Civil War
see all genres ›The United States’ divisive clash of 1861 saw several slave-owning Southern states secede from the Union only to be forced back in after four bloody and debilitating years of warfare. This ugly chapter remains a source of historical fascination (and even personal identification) for many Americans.
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Genres / War / U.S. Civil War
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His Trust
HIS TRUST, subtitled "the faithful devotion and self- sacrifice of an old negro servant," is something of a race-relations precursor to D.W. Griffith's better-known BIRTH OF A NATION. The aforementioned servant is played in blackface, unfortunately, but the character's portrayal might surprise...Watch Movie
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His Trust Fulfilled
D. W. Griffith's loose sequel to HIS TRUST features George the "negro servant" who, after looking after the widow and daughter of his slain Confederate master in the first film, is now called upon to look after the girl when her mother dies. George's sacrifices to place the...Watch Movie
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Mysterious Island
It is 1865 and Union prisoners use a military balloon to escape a Southern prison camp near the end of the Civil War. The balloon drifts for days and finally lands on a mysterious volcanic island with very unusual inhabitants. Also landing (in a better aircraft) is Rulu, a...Watch Movie
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Lee: Beyond the Battles
Using contemporary on-location footage, re-enactors, photographic and portrait stills this PBS production gives the viewer a glimpse of Robert E. Lee the man. One historian has called him "the Marble Man" more an icon to the South than a flesh and blood man. This work gives us...Watch Movie
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The House with Closed Shutters
D.W. Griffith throws an exciting wrench in this otherwise conventional Civil War melodrama when a proud daughter of the confederacy takes her coward brother's place on the battlefield. She's killed in heroic fashion and her mother shutters the house to protect the secret of...Watch Movie
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In the Border States
A little girl for the Union shelters a Confederate soldier, thereby initiating a chain of events that symbolically repairs the damages wrought by the Civil War. D.W. Griffith takes advantage of pictorial landscapes to stage his battle scenes and his famous parallel editing...Watch Movie
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The Battle
Unlike many of D.W. Griffith's early Civil War melodramas, THE BATTLE focuses on actual combat. A Union soldier panics during his first fight and flees to his girlfriend's house. She bullies him back into harm's way as the balance of war begins to shift. Dynamic battle scenes jammed with...Watch Movie
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Their One Love
One of the many Civil War movies made during the 50th anniversary of the conflict. This was one of Thanhouser’s last one-reel dramas and was released just after D.W. Griffith’s Civil War epic THE BIRTH OF A NATION. Griffith’s monumental picture had included three long-shots of nighttime...Watch Movie
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The Fugitive
Five years before his controversial epic THE BIRTH OF A NATION, D.W. Griffith directed this relatively muted melodrama of two Johns fighting in the Civil War (one for the Union and the other for the Confederacy). Both men say goodbye to mothers and sweethearts and make haste for overgrown...Watch Movie
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Swords and Hearts
D.W. Griffith packs an epic feature's worth of marauding, heartbreak and syrupy nostalgia into this short Civil War romance. Hugh Frazier (Wilfred Lucas) is the son of a wealthy tobacco farmer who leaves the plantation to fight for the Confederacy. He loves a well-heeled belle...Watch Movie
