Cradle of a Nation (1947) User Reviews

Average documentary on Virginia from the TravelTalk series...

[Doylenf · 6/10 · 4 July 2008]

This documentary from James A. FitzPatrick on Virginia, opens on a view of Mt. Vernon, where a new nation was being cradled under the auspices of America's first president, George Washington. Paintings of George and Martha Washington reveal that they both strongly resembled each other.

We see the home of Robert E. Lee, born in 1807, the great Southern leader who fought for a lost cause. Thomas Jefferson's home resembles the Selznick version of Twelve Oaks from GWTW with its imposing pillars and structural similarities. The narration reveals that Jefferson was the author of the first anti-slave bill.

Imposing pillars are on display in fine Southern style when we visit the a military institute built in 1839 for training young men in battle. Stonewall Jackson is said to have trained young men at Virginia Military Institute.

CRADLE OF A NATION closes with a view of Colonial Williamsburg with its courthouse, its Governor's Palace built in 1720, and some monuments, including Pocahontas of legendary fame.

birth of a nation

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 20 March 2021]

Traveltalks goes to Virginia. The first stop is Mount Vernon, home of George Washington. Next is the Free Mansions in Alexandria. Then it's Confederate general Robert E. Lee and Monticello, home of president Thomas Jefferson. There, the episode finally mentions the slaves. It's a lot of old Virginia. It's a campus tour and a historical tour combined. For its time and its purpose, one can't expect much more than this.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

[boblipton · 5/10 · 21 March 2021]

James A. Fitzpatrick sends the Technicolor cameras under the supervision of Paul Rogalli, to shoot pretty pictures of buildings erected at least a hundred years earlier. He then proceeds to talk about the famous men that Virginia had birthed, growing, as was usual with him, more circumlocutious as he treads nearer issues of treason and slavery that praising Robert E. Lee raises in my mind. That was the standard line in the movies for most of the last century: a romantic nostalgia for lost beauty of the slave owner, without any thught of the slave.

Well, the pictures are pretty, as is typical of this travelogue series. The copy that plays on Turner Classic Movies is in good shape.

No one held a gun to the head of . . .

[cricket30 · 6/10 · 26 March 2021]

. . . the blathering buffoon narrating CRADLE OF A NATION, ordering him to be a Cheerleader for Evil. However, this ostensibly "non-fiction" piece makes that pernicious earlier BIRTH OF A NATION feature film look like an NAACP documentary by way of comparison. Every word oozing from this rattlesnake oil salesman's fangs pays homage to involuntary servitude, pale-faced Occidental Supremacy, James Crow outrages, humans for sale, treasonous rebellion, murderous traitors, justice delayed forever, thwarted payback, insurrection, war profiteering, stolen lands, Manifest Destruction, child exploitation, wrong-headed rationalizations, multi-generational in-breeding, misgovernment, mob rule and other sulfurous spouting worthy of fire and brimstone. If film censors enforced the Truth in Advertising laws, this short would be entitled NEST OF VIPERS.