The Birth of a Nation
Encyclopedia
The Birth of a Nation is a 1915 American
silent
film directed
by D. W. Griffith
and based on the novel
and play
The Clansman
, both by Thomas Dixon, Jr.
Griffith also co-wrote the screenplay (with Frank E. Woods
), and co-produced the film (with Harry Aitken). It was released on February 8, 1915. The film was originally presented in two parts, separated by an intermission.
The film chronicles the relationship of two families in Civil War
and Reconstruction-era America: the pro-Union
northern
Stonemans and the pro-Confederacy
Southern
Camerons over the course of several years. The assassination of President
Abraham Lincoln
by John Wilkes Booth
is dramatized.
The film was a big commercial success, but was highly controversial owing to its portrayal of African American
men (played by white
actors in blackface
) as unintelligent and sexually aggressive towards white women, and the portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan
(whose original founding is dramatized) as a heroic force. There were widespread protests against The Birth of a Nation, and it was banned in several cities. The outcry of racism
was so great that D.W. Griffith was inspired to produce Intolerance
the following year.
The film is also credited as one of the events which inspired the formation of the "second era" Ku Klux Klan at Stone Mountain
, Georgia
in the same year. The Birth of a Nation was used as a recruiting tool for the KKK.
It was the first motion picture to be shown at the White House
. President Woodrow Wilson
supposedly said the film was "... like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." The attribution is disputed.
), his two sons, and his daughter Elsie; and the Southern Camerons, a family including two daughters, Margaret and Flora, and three sons, most notably Ben.
The Stoneman brothers visit the Camerons at their South Carolina
estate, representing the Old South
. The elder of the two Stoneman sons falls in love with Margaret Cameron, while Ben Cameron idolizes a picture of Elsie Stoneman. When the Civil War begins, all the young men join their respective armies.
A black militia
(with a white leader) ransacks the Cameron house. The Cameron women are rescued when Confederate soldiers rout the militia. Meanwhile, the younger Stoneman and two of the Cameron brothers are killed in the war. Ben Cameron is wounded after a heroic charge at the Siege of Petersburg
, in which he gains the nickname "the Little Colonel". He is taken to a Northern hospital where he meets Elsie Stoneman, who is working there as a nurse. While recovering, Cameron is told that he will be hanged for being a guerrilla. Elsie takes Cameron's mother, who has traveled to Washington to tend her son, to see Abraham Lincoln
. Mrs. Cameron persuades Lincoln to issue a pardon.
After Lincoln is assassinated at Ford's Theater, with him dies his conciliatory postwar policy. Austin Stoneman and other radical congressmen are determined to punish the South, using harsh measures that Griffith depicts as typical of the Reconstruction era.
protégé, Silas Lynch, go to South Carolina in 1871 to observe the situation first hand. Black soldiers parade through the streets. During the election, whites are turned away while blacks stuff the ballot boxes. Lynch is elected Lieutenant Governor. The newly elected mostly black legislature is shown at their desks, with one member taking off his shoe and putting his feet up, and others eating and drinking liquor. They pass laws requiring white civilians to salute black officers and allowing mixed-race marriages.
Meanwhile, Ben, inspired by observing white children pretending to be ghosts to scare off black children, fights back by forming the Ku Klux Klan. As a result, Elsie breaks off their relationship out of loyalty to her father.
Gus, a freedman and soldier, follows Flora Cameron as she goes to fetch water by herself. He tells her he is looking to get married. Frightened, she flees into the forest, pursued by Gus. Trapped on a precipice, Flora warns Gus she will jump if he comes any closer. When he does, she leaps to her death. Ben finds his sister and holds her as she lies dying. The Klan hunts Gus down, tries him, and finds him guilty. The clansmen leave his corpse on Lynch's doorstep.
Lynch orders a crackdown on the Klan. Dr. Cameron, Ben's father, is arrested for having Ben's Klan costume, a crime punishable by death. Ben and their faithful servants rescue him, and the Camerons flee. When their wagon breaks down, they make their way to a small hut, home to two former Union soldiers, who agree to hide them. As an intertitle states, "The former enemies of North and South are united again in defense of their Aryan
birthright."
Austin Stoneman leaves to avoid being connected with Lynch's crackdown. Elsie, learning of Dr. Cameron's arrest, goes to Lynch to plead for his release. Lynch tries to force Elsie to marry him. Stoneman returns, and is happy at first when Lynch tells him he wants to marry a white woman, but is angered when Lynch tells him which one. Disguised Klansmen spies discover Elsie's plight and leave to get help.
The Klan, gathered together at full strength and with Ben leading them, rides in to regain control of the town. When news reaches Ben about Elsie, he and others go to her rescue. Lynch is captured. Victorious, the clansmen celebrate in the streets. Meanwhile, Lynch's militia surrounds and attacks the hut where the Camerons are hiding. The clansmen, with Ben at their head, race to save them just in time.
The next election day, blacks find a line of mounted and armed Klansmen just outside their homes, and are intimidated into not voting. The film concludes with a double honeymoon of Phil Stoneman with Margaret Cameron and Ben Cameron with Elsie Stoneman. The masses are shown oppressed by a giant warlike figure who gradually fades away. The scene shifts to another group finding peace under the image of Christ
. The penultimate title rhetorically asks: "Dare we dream of a golden day when the bestial War shall rule no more? But instead-the gentle Prince in the Hall of Brotherly Love in the City of Peace."
Uncredited:
The Birth of a Nation began filming in 1914 and pioneered such camera techniques as the use of panoramic long shots, the iris effects, still-shots, night photography, panning camera shots, and a carefully staged battle sequence with hundreds of extras made to look like thousands. It also contains many new artistic techniques, such as color tinting for dramatic purposes, building up the plot to an exciting climax, dramatizing history alongside fiction, and featuring its own musical score written for an orchestra. At the time, it shattered both box office and film-length records, running three hours and ten minutes. Its power continues to be recognized. In 1998, it was voted one of the "Top 100 American Films" (#44) by the American Film Institute in 1998.
The film was based on Thomas Dixon's
novels The Clansman
and The Leopard's Spots
. Griffith, whose father served as a colonel in the Confederate Army, agreed to pay Thomas Dixon $10,000 (equal to $ today) for the rights to his play The Clansman. Since he ran out of money and could afford only $2,500 of the original option, Griffith offered Dixon 25 percent interest in the picture. Dixon reluctantly agreed. The film's unprecedented success made him rich. Dixon's proceeds were the largest sum any author had received for a motion picture story and amounted to several million dollars.
Griffith's budget started at US$40,000 (equal to $ today), but the film finally cost $112,000 (the equivalent of $2.41 million in 2010). As a result, Griffith had to seek new sources of capital for his film. A ticket to the film cost a record $2 (equal to $ today).
West Point
engineers provided technical advice on the Civil War
battle scenes. They provided Griffith with the artillery used in the film.
The film premiered on February 8, 1915, at Clune's Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles
. At its premiere the film was entitled The Clansman, but the title was later changed to The Birth of a Nation to reflect Griffith's belief that the United States
emerged out of the American Civil War
and Reconstruction as a unified nation.
The film is in the public domain
.
(NAACP), founded in 1909, protested premieres of the film in numerous cities. It also conducted a public education campaign, publishing articles protesting the film's fabrications and inaccuracies, organizing petitions against it, and conducting education on the facts of the war and Reconstruction.
When the film was shown, riots broke out in Boston, Philadelphia and other major cities. The cities of Chicago; Denver; Kansas City, Missouri; Minneapolis; Pittsburgh; and St. Louis, Missouri refused to allow the film to open. The film's inflammatory character was a catalyst for gangs of whites to attack blacks. In , after seeing the movie, a white man murdered a black teenager.
Thomas Dixon
, author of the source play The Clansman
, was a former classmate of Woodrow Wilson
at Johns Hopkins University
. Dixon arranged a screening at the White House
, for then-President Wilson, members of his cabinet, and their families. Wilson was reported to have said about the film, "It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true". In Wilson: The New Freedom, the historian Arthur Link quotes Wilson's aide, Joseph Tumulty, who denied Wilson said this and also claims that "the President was entirely unaware of the nature of the play before it was presented and at no time has expressed his approbation of it."
Wilson's History of the American People (1931) described the Ku Klux Klan of the late 1860s as the natural outgrowth of Reconstruction, a lawless reaction to a lawless period. Wilson wrote that the Klan "began to attempt by intimidation what they were not allowed to attempt by the ballot or by any ordered course of public action."
Historians believe the quote attributed to Wilson originated with Dixon, who was relentless in publicizing the film. It has been repeated so often in print that it has taken on a separate life. Dixon went so far as to promote the film as "Federally endorsed". After controversy over the film had grown, Wilson wrote that he disapproved of the "unfortunate production." D. W. Griffith responded to the film's negative critical reception with his next film Intolerance
.
Soon after World War I
, in 1918, Emmett J. Scott helped produce and John W. Noble directed The Birth of a Race
, hoping to capitalize on the success of Griffith's film by presenting a film set during the war. It featured a German-American family divided by the war, with sons fighting on either side, and the one loyal to the United States surviving to be part of the victory.
In 1919, the director/producer/writer Oscar Micheaux
released Within Our Gates
, a response from the African-American community. Notably, he reversed a key scene of Griffith's film by depicting a white man assaulting a black woman.
The film was remixed as Rebirth of a Nation: a "live" cinema experience by DJ Spooky
at Lincoln Center, and has toured at many venues around the world including The Acropolis as a live cinema "remix." The remix version was also presented at Paula Cooper Gallery in New York
The film is controversial due to its interpretation of history. University of Houston
historian Steven Mintz summarizes its message as follows: Reconstruction was a disaster, blacks could never be integrated
into white society as equals, and the violent actions of the Ku Klux Klan were justified to reestablish honest government. The film suggested that the Ku Klux Klan restored order to the post-war South, which was depicted as endangered by abolitionists, freedmen, and carpetbagging
Republican politicians from the North. This reflects the so-called Dunning School
of historiography.
W. E. B. Du Bois and other black historians vigorously disputed this interpretation when the film was released. Most historians of all backgrounds today agree with Du Bois, as they note African American
s' loyalty and contributions during the Civil War years and Reconstruction, including the establishment of universal public education. Some historians, such as E. Merton Coulter
in his The South Under Reconstruction (1947), maintained the Dunning School view after World War II
. Today the Dunning School position is largely seen as a product of anti-black racism of the early twentieth century, by which many Americans held that black Americans were unequal as citizens.
Veteran film reviewer Roger Ebert
wrote,
Despite some similarities between the Congressman Stoneman character and Rep. Thaddeus Stevens
of Pennsylvania
, Rep. Stevens did not have the family members described and did not move to South Carolina during Reconstruction. He died in Washington, DC in 1868. However, Stevens was widely rumored to keep a mulatto mistress-housekeeper, who was generously provided for in his will.
The depictions of mass Klan paramilitary actions do not seem to have historical equivalents, although there were incidents in 1871 where Klan groups traveled from other areas in fairly large numbers to aid localities in disarming local companies of the all-black portion of the state militia under various justifications prior to the eventual Federal troop intervention and the organized Klan's continued activities as small groups of "night riders".
The civil rights movement
and other social movements created a new generation of historians, such as scholar Eric Foner
, who led a reassessment of Reconstruction. Building on Du Bois' work but also adding new sources, they focused on achievements of the African American and white Republican coalitions, such as establishment of universal public education and charitable institutions in the South and extension of suffrage
to black men. In response, the Southern-dominated Democratic Party
and its affiliated white militias used extensive terrorism, intimidation and outright assassinations to suppress African-American leaders and voting in the 1870s and to regain power.
The film grossed $10 million in its first year of release, and over the next 35 years increased its total to $50 million, holding the mantle of the highest grossing film for a decade.
In 1992, the United States Library of Congress
deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry
. Despite its controversial story, the film has been praised by film critics such as Roger Ebert
, who said: "The Birth of a Nation is not a bad film because it argues for evil. Like Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will
, it is a great film that argues for evil. To understand how it does so is to learn a great deal about film, and even something about evil." The website Rotten Tomatoes
, which compiles reviews from various sources, indicates the film has a 100% "fresh" (positive) rating.
According to a 2002 article in the Los Angeles Times
, the film facilitated the refounding of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. As late as the 1970s, the Ku Klux Klan continued to use the film as a recruitment tool.
American Film Institute
recognition
was released to theaters one year later, in 1916. The film was directed by Thomas Dixon
, who adapted it from the novel of the same name. The film has three acts and a prologue. Despite its success in the foreign market, the film was not a success among the American audiences. It is considered a lost film
.
These are the second and third of three opening title cards which defend the film. The added titles read:
Various film historians have expressed a range of views about these titles. To Nicholas Andrew Miller, this shows that "Griffith's greatest achievement in The Birth of Nation was that he brought the cinema's capacity for spectacle...under the rein of an outdated by comfortably literary form of historical narrative. Griffith's models...are not the pioneers of film spectacle...but the giants of literary narrative." On the other hand, S. Kittrell Rushing complains about Griffith's "didactic" title-cards, while Stanley Corkin complains that Griffith "masks his idea of fact in the rhetoric of high art and free expression" and creates film which "erodes the very ideal" of "liberty" which he asserts.
Cinema of the United States
The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
silent
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
film directed
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
by D. W. Griffith
D. W. Griffith
David Llewelyn Wark Griffith was a premier pioneering American film director. He is best known as the director of the controversial and groundbreaking 1915 film The Birth of a Nation and the subsequent film Intolerance .Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation made pioneering use of advanced camera...
and based on the novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
and play
Play (theatre)
A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...
The Clansman
The Clansman
The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan is the title of a novel published in 1905. It was the second work in the Ku Klux Klan trilogy by Thomas F. Dixon, Jr. that included The Leopard's Spots and The Traitor. It was influential in providing the ideology that helped support the...
, both by Thomas Dixon, Jr.
Thomas Dixon, Jr.
Thomas F. Dixon, Jr. was an American Baptist minister, playwright, lecturer, North Carolina state legislator, lawyer, and author, perhaps best known for writing The Clansman — which was to become the inspiration for D. W...
Griffith also co-wrote the screenplay (with Frank E. Woods
Frank E. Woods
Frank E. Woods was an American screenwriter of the silent era. He wrote for 90 films between 1908 and 1925. Woods was also a pioneering film reviewer. His contributions to film criticism are discussed in the documentary, For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism. He was also...
), and co-produced the film (with Harry Aitken). It was released on February 8, 1915. The film was originally presented in two parts, separated by an intermission.
The film chronicles the relationship of two families in Civil War
Civil war
A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same nation state or republic, or, less commonly, between two countries created from a formerly-united nation state....
and Reconstruction-era America: the pro-Union
Union (American Civil War)
During the American Civil War, the Union was a name used to refer to the federal government of the United States, which was supported by the twenty free states and five border slave states. It was opposed by 11 southern slave states that had declared a secession to join together to form the...
northern
Northern United States
Northern United States, also sometimes the North, may refer to:* A particular grouping of states or regions of the United States of America. The United States Census Bureau divides some of the northernmost United States into the Midwest Region and the Northeast Region...
Stonemans and the pro-Confederacy
Confederate States of America
The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...
Southern
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
Camerons over the course of several years. The assassination of President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
by John Wilkes Booth
John Wilkes Booth
John Wilkes Booth was an American stage actor who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. Booth was a member of the prominent 19th century Booth theatrical family from Maryland and, by the 1860s, was a well-known actor...
is dramatized.
The film was a big commercial success, but was highly controversial owing to its portrayal of African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
men (played by white
White people
White people is a term which usually refers to human beings characterized, at least in part, by the light pigmentation of their skin...
actors in blackface
Blackface
Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used in minstrel shows, and later vaudeville, in which performers create a stereotyped caricature of a black person. The practice gained popularity during the 19th century and contributed to the proliferation of stereotypes such as the "happy-go-lucky darky...
) as unintelligent and sexually aggressive towards white women, and the portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
(whose original founding is dramatized) as a heroic force. There were widespread protests against The Birth of a Nation, and it was banned in several cities. The outcry of racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
was so great that D.W. Griffith was inspired to produce Intolerance
Intolerance (film)
Intolerance is a 1916 American silent film directed by D. W. Griffith and is considered one of the great masterpieces of the Silent Era. The three-and-a-half hour epic intercuts four parallel storylines each separated by several centuries: A contemporary melodrama of crime and redemption; a...
the following year.
The film is also credited as one of the events which inspired the formation of the "second era" Ku Klux Klan at Stone Mountain
Stone Mountain
Stone Mountain is a quartz monzonite dome monadnock in Stone Mountain, Georgia, United States. At its summit, the elevation is 1,686 feet amsl and 825 feet above the surrounding area. Stone Mountain granite extends underground at its longest point into Gwinnett County...
, Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
in the same year. The Birth of a Nation was used as a recruiting tool for the KKK.
It was the first motion picture to be shown at the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
. President Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
supposedly said the film was "... like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." The attribution is disputed.
Part 1: Pre-Civil War America
The film follows two juxtaposed families: the Northern Stonemans, consisting of the abolitionist Congressman Austin Stoneman (based on the Reconstruction-era Congressman Thaddeus StevensThaddeus Stevens
Thaddeus Stevens , of Pennsylvania, was a Republican leader and one of the most powerful members of the United States House of Representatives...
), his two sons, and his daughter Elsie; and the Southern Camerons, a family including two daughters, Margaret and Flora, and three sons, most notably Ben.
The Stoneman brothers visit the Camerons at their South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
estate, representing the Old South
Old South
Geographically, Old South is a subregion of the American South, differentiated from the "Deep South" as being the Southern States represented in the original thirteen American colonies, as well as a way of describing the former lifestyle in the Southern United States. Culturally, the term can be...
. The elder of the two Stoneman sons falls in love with Margaret Cameron, while Ben Cameron idolizes a picture of Elsie Stoneman. When the Civil War begins, all the young men join their respective armies.
A black militia
Militia
The term militia is commonly used today to refer to a military force composed of ordinary citizens to provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service, in times of emergency without being paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service. It is a polyseme with...
(with a white leader) ransacks the Cameron house. The Cameron women are rescued when Confederate soldiers rout the militia. Meanwhile, the younger Stoneman and two of the Cameron brothers are killed in the war. Ben Cameron is wounded after a heroic charge at the Siege of Petersburg
Siege of Petersburg
The Richmond–Petersburg Campaign was a series of battles around Petersburg, Virginia, fought from June 9, 1864, to March 25, 1865, during the American Civil War...
, in which he gains the nickname "the Little Colonel". He is taken to a Northern hospital where he meets Elsie Stoneman, who is working there as a nurse. While recovering, Cameron is told that he will be hanged for being a guerrilla. Elsie takes Cameron's mother, who has traveled to Washington to tend her son, to see Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
. Mrs. Cameron persuades Lincoln to issue a pardon.
After Lincoln is assassinated at Ford's Theater, with him dies his conciliatory postwar policy. Austin Stoneman and other radical congressmen are determined to punish the South, using harsh measures that Griffith depicts as typical of the Reconstruction era.
Part 2: Reconstruction
Stoneman and his mulattoMulatto
Mulatto denotes a person with one white parent and one black parent, or more broadly, a person of mixed black and white ancestry. Contemporary usage of the term varies greatly, and the broader sense of the term makes its application rather subjective, as not all people of mixed white and black...
protégé, Silas Lynch, go to South Carolina in 1871 to observe the situation first hand. Black soldiers parade through the streets. During the election, whites are turned away while blacks stuff the ballot boxes. Lynch is elected Lieutenant Governor. The newly elected mostly black legislature is shown at their desks, with one member taking off his shoe and putting his feet up, and others eating and drinking liquor. They pass laws requiring white civilians to salute black officers and allowing mixed-race marriages.
Meanwhile, Ben, inspired by observing white children pretending to be ghosts to scare off black children, fights back by forming the Ku Klux Klan. As a result, Elsie breaks off their relationship out of loyalty to her father.
Gus, a freedman and soldier, follows Flora Cameron as she goes to fetch water by herself. He tells her he is looking to get married. Frightened, she flees into the forest, pursued by Gus. Trapped on a precipice, Flora warns Gus she will jump if he comes any closer. When he does, she leaps to her death. Ben finds his sister and holds her as she lies dying. The Klan hunts Gus down, tries him, and finds him guilty. The clansmen leave his corpse on Lynch's doorstep.
Lynch orders a crackdown on the Klan. Dr. Cameron, Ben's father, is arrested for having Ben's Klan costume, a crime punishable by death. Ben and their faithful servants rescue him, and the Camerons flee. When their wagon breaks down, they make their way to a small hut, home to two former Union soldiers, who agree to hide them. As an intertitle states, "The former enemies of North and South are united again in defense of their Aryan
Aryan
Aryan is an English language loanword derived from Sanskrit ārya and denoting variously*In scholarly usage:**Indo-Iranian languages *in dated usage:**the Indo-European languages more generally and their speakers...
birthright."
Austin Stoneman leaves to avoid being connected with Lynch's crackdown. Elsie, learning of Dr. Cameron's arrest, goes to Lynch to plead for his release. Lynch tries to force Elsie to marry him. Stoneman returns, and is happy at first when Lynch tells him he wants to marry a white woman, but is angered when Lynch tells him which one. Disguised Klansmen spies discover Elsie's plight and leave to get help.
The Klan, gathered together at full strength and with Ben leading them, rides in to regain control of the town. When news reaches Ben about Elsie, he and others go to her rescue. Lynch is captured. Victorious, the clansmen celebrate in the streets. Meanwhile, Lynch's militia surrounds and attacks the hut where the Camerons are hiding. The clansmen, with Ben at their head, race to save them just in time.
The next election day, blacks find a line of mounted and armed Klansmen just outside their homes, and are intimidated into not voting. The film concludes with a double honeymoon of Phil Stoneman with Margaret Cameron and Ben Cameron with Elsie Stoneman. The masses are shown oppressed by a giant warlike figure who gradually fades away. The scene shifts to another group finding peace under the image of Christ
Christ
Christ is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...
. The penultimate title rhetorically asks: "Dare we dream of a golden day when the bestial War shall rule no more? But instead-the gentle Prince in the Hall of Brotherly Love in the City of Peace."
Cast
Credited:- Lillian GishLillian GishLillian Diana Gish was an American stage, screen and television actress whose film acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912 to 1987....
as Elsie Stoneman - Mae MarshMae MarshMae Marsh was an American film actress with a career spanning over 50 years.-Early life:...
as Flora Cameron - Henry B. WalthallHenry B. WalthallHenry Brazeale Walthall was an American film actor.-Career:Walthall began his career as a stage actor, appearing on Broadway in a supporting role in William Vaughn Moody's The Great Divide in 1906–1908. His career in movies began in 1908, in the film Rescued from an Eagle's Nest, which also...
as Colonel Ben Cameron - Miriam CooperMiriam CooperMiriam Cooper was a silent film actress who is best known for her work in early film including Birth of a Nation and Intolerance for D.W. Griffith and The Honor System and Evangeline for her husband Raoul Walsh...
as Margaret Cameron - Ralph LewisRalph LewisRalph Lewis may refer to:*Ralph Lewis , *Ralph Lewis , *Ralph Maxwell Lewis, Imperator of Rosicrucian organisation Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis from 1939 to 1987*Ralph Lewis...
as Austin Stoneman - George SiegmannGeorge SiegmannGeorge Siegmann was an American actor in the silent film era. His more notable roles include Silas Lynch in Griffith's Birth of A Nation , the guard in the 1927 film The Cat and the Canary, Porthos in The Three Musketeers , Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist , and Dr...
as Silas Lynch - Walter LongWalter Long (actor)Walter Huntley Long was an American character actor in films from the 1910s. He was born in Nashua, New Hampshire.-Career:He appeared in many D. W...
as Gus - Robert HarronRobert HarronRobert "Bobby" Harron was an American motion picture actor of the early silent film era. Although he acted in scores of films, he is possibly best remembered for his roles in the D.W. Griffith directed films Intolerance and The Birth of a Nation...
as Tod Stoneman - Wallace ReidWallace ReidWallace Reid was an actor in silent film referred to as "the screen's most perfect lover".-Early life:Born William Wallace Reid in St...
as Jeff the blacksmith - Joseph HenaberyJoseph HenaberyJoseph Henabery Omaha, Nebraska, was a US film actor, screenplay writer, and director.-Career:Henabery's acting career began in The Joke on Yellentown . Henabery appeared in the D. W. Griffith silent film Birth of a Nation as Abraham Lincoln...
as Abraham Lincoln - Elmer CliftonElmer CliftonElmer Clifton, was an American writer, director, and actor from the early silent days. A collaborator of D. W. Griffith, he appeared in The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance before giving up acting in 1919 to concentrate on work behind the camera...
as Phil Stoneman - Josephine CrowellJosephine CrowellJosephine Crowell was a Canadian film actress of the silent film era. She appeared in 94 films between 1912 and 1929....
as Mrs. Cameron - Spottiswoode AitkenSpottiswoode AitkenFrank Spottiswoode Aitken was a Scottish- American actor of the silent era.Aitken was one of the first actors to settle in Los Angeles when the film industry was still at its strongest in New York...
as Dr. Cameron - George BerangerGeorge BerangerGeorges Augustus Alexandre Roger de L'ile de Beranger , born George Augustus Beringer, was the seventh child of Adam Beringer and Caroline Mondientz. He was an Australian actor and film director. He played Shakespearean roles at the age of sixteen and left Australia in 1912 and began film work in...
as Wade Cameron - Maxfield Stanley as Duke Cameron
- Jennie LeeJennie Lee (actor)Jennie Lee was an American actress of the silent era. She appeared in fifty-eight films between 1912 and 1924, working especially under the famous directors John Ford and D.W. Griffith....
as Mammy - Donald CrispDonald CrispDonald Crisp was an English film actor. He was also an early motion picture producer, director and screenwriter...
as General Ulysses S. Grant - Howard GayeHoward Gaye-Selected filmography:* Birth of a Nation * Intolerance * The Spirit of '76 * The Scarlet Pimpernel * A Slave of Vanity * My Lady's Latchkey * A Prince of Lovers...
as General Robert E. Lee
Uncredited:
- Mary AldenMary AldenMary Maguire Alden was an American motion picture and stage actress. She was one of the first Broadway actresses to work in Hollywood.-Career:Born in New York City, Alden began her career on the Broadway stage...
as Lydia Brown - Monte BlueMonte BlueMonte Blue was a movie actor who began his career as a romantic leading man in the silent film era, and later progressed to character roles....
- Bobby BurnsBobby BurnsBobby Burns was an American film actor and director. He appeared in 201 films between 1908 and 1952 as well as directing 13 films between 1915 and 1916....
as Klan Leader - David Butler as Union Soldier / Confederate Soldier
- Peggy CartwrightPeggy CartwrightPeggy Cartwright was a Canadian silent film actress perhaps best known for her short stint as the leading lady of the Our Gang comedies. She appeared in four shorts in 1922 and, possibly, the pilot for the series, Our Gang .Her first husband was Phil Baker with whom she had four children...
as Young Girl - John FordJohn FordJohn Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...
as Klansman - Gibson GowlandGibson GowlandGibson Gowland was an English film actor.Early sources had his birth place place as Newcastle. He started work as a sailor and later became mate of a ship...
- Sam De GrasseSam De GrasseSamuel Alfred De Grasse was a Canadian actor. Born in Bathurst, New Brunswick, he trained to be a dentist....
as Senator Charles Sumner - Olga GreyOlga GreyOlga Grey was an American silent film actress.Anna "Anushka" Zacsek, a Budapest native, immigrated to the United States, and by her late teens was pursuing an acting career in Hollywood....
as Laura Keene - Russell Hicks
- Elmo LincolnElmo LincolnElmo Lincoln was an American film actor.Born Otto Elmo Linkenhelt, the barrel-chested actor is best known in his silent movie role as the first Tarzan in 1918's Tarzan of the Apes as an adult --...
as Blacksmith - Eugene PalletteEugene PalletteEugene William Pallette was an American actor. He appeared in over 240 silent era and sound era motion pictures between 1913 and 1946....
as Union Soldier - Vester PeggVester PeggVester Pegg was an American actor of the silent era. He appeared in 140 films between 1912 and 1941.He was born in Appleton City, Missouri and died in Los Angeles, California.-Selected filmography:...
- Alma RubensAlma RubensAlma Rubens was an American silent film actress and stage performer.-Early life:Born to John B. and Theresa Hayes Rueben in San Francisco, California, she performed since youth and became a star at the age of 19. She was educated at the Sacred Heart Convent in San Francisco...
- Charles StevensCharles Stevens (actor)Charles Stevens was an American actor.The grandson of Geronimo, Stevens appeared in nearly 200 films between 1915 and 1961...
as Volunteer - Madame Sul-Te-WanMadame Sul-Te-WanMadame Sul-Te-Wan was an American actress. The daughter of freed slaves, she began her career in entertainment touring the east coast with various theatrical companies and moved to California to become a member of the fledgling film community...
as Black Woman - Raoul WalshRaoul WalshRaoul Walsh was an American film director, actor, founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the brother of silent screen actor George Walsh...
as John Wilkes Booth - Jules WhiteJules WhiteJules White born Julius Weiss was a film director and producer best known for his short-subject comedies starring the Three Stooges.-Early years:...
- Violet WilkeyViolet WilkeyViolet Wilkey was an American child actor who appeared in films over a four year period during the early silent film era....
as Flora as a child - Tom WilsonTom Wilson (actor)Tom Wilson was an American film actor. He appeared in 254 films between 1915 and 1963. He was born in Helena, Montana, and died in Los Angeles, California.-Selected filmography:* Little Marie...
as Stoneman's Servant - Mary WynnMary WynnMary Wynn was an American film actress of the silent film era.Born Phoebe Isabelle Bassor Watson in San Francisco, California, she began acting with a 1914 role in False Pride, starring Jennie Lee and Charles Gorman...
- W.B. Freeman as Union prison camp sentry
Production
The film was based on Thomas Dixon's
Thomas Dixon, Jr.
Thomas F. Dixon, Jr. was an American Baptist minister, playwright, lecturer, North Carolina state legislator, lawyer, and author, perhaps best known for writing The Clansman — which was to become the inspiration for D. W...
novels The Clansman
The Clansman
The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan is the title of a novel published in 1905. It was the second work in the Ku Klux Klan trilogy by Thomas F. Dixon, Jr. that included The Leopard's Spots and The Traitor. It was influential in providing the ideology that helped support the...
and The Leopard's Spots
The Leopard's Spots
The Leopard's Spots is the first novel of Thomas Dixon's Ku Klux Klan trilogy that included The Clansman and The Traitor. In the novel Dixon offers an account of Reconstruction in which he portrays the villains as a former slave driver, Northern carpetbaggers and emancipated slaves; and heroes as...
. Griffith, whose father served as a colonel in the Confederate Army, agreed to pay Thomas Dixon $10,000 (equal to $ today) for the rights to his play The Clansman. Since he ran out of money and could afford only $2,500 of the original option, Griffith offered Dixon 25 percent interest in the picture. Dixon reluctantly agreed. The film's unprecedented success made him rich. Dixon's proceeds were the largest sum any author had received for a motion picture story and amounted to several million dollars.
Griffith's budget started at US$40,000 (equal to $ today), but the film finally cost $112,000 (the equivalent of $2.41 million in 2010). As a result, Griffith had to seek new sources of capital for his film. A ticket to the film cost a record $2 (equal to $ today).
West Point
United States Military Academy
The United States Military Academy at West Point is a four-year coeducational federal service academy located at West Point, New York. The academy sits on scenic high ground overlooking the Hudson River, north of New York City...
engineers provided technical advice on the Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
battle scenes. They provided Griffith with the artillery used in the film.
The film premiered on February 8, 1915, at Clune's Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
. At its premiere the film was entitled The Clansman, but the title was later changed to The Birth of a Nation to reflect Griffith's belief that the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
emerged out of the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
and Reconstruction as a unified nation.
The film is in the public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
.
Responses
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored PeopleNational Association for the Advancement of Colored People
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, usually abbreviated as NAACP, is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to...
(NAACP), founded in 1909, protested premieres of the film in numerous cities. It also conducted a public education campaign, publishing articles protesting the film's fabrications and inaccuracies, organizing petitions against it, and conducting education on the facts of the war and Reconstruction.
When the film was shown, riots broke out in Boston, Philadelphia and other major cities. The cities of Chicago; Denver; Kansas City, Missouri; Minneapolis; Pittsburgh; and St. Louis, Missouri refused to allow the film to open. The film's inflammatory character was a catalyst for gangs of whites to attack blacks. In , after seeing the movie, a white man murdered a black teenager.
Thomas Dixon
Thomas Dixon, Jr.
Thomas F. Dixon, Jr. was an American Baptist minister, playwright, lecturer, North Carolina state legislator, lawyer, and author, perhaps best known for writing The Clansman — which was to become the inspiration for D. W...
, author of the source play The Clansman
The Clansman
The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan is the title of a novel published in 1905. It was the second work in the Ku Klux Klan trilogy by Thomas F. Dixon, Jr. that included The Leopard's Spots and The Traitor. It was influential in providing the ideology that helped support the...
, was a former classmate of Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
at Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...
. Dixon arranged a screening at the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
, for then-President Wilson, members of his cabinet, and their families. Wilson was reported to have said about the film, "It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true". In Wilson: The New Freedom, the historian Arthur Link quotes Wilson's aide, Joseph Tumulty, who denied Wilson said this and also claims that "the President was entirely unaware of the nature of the play before it was presented and at no time has expressed his approbation of it."
Wilson's History of the American People (1931) described the Ku Klux Klan of the late 1860s as the natural outgrowth of Reconstruction, a lawless reaction to a lawless period. Wilson wrote that the Klan "began to attempt by intimidation what they were not allowed to attempt by the ballot or by any ordered course of public action."
Historians believe the quote attributed to Wilson originated with Dixon, who was relentless in publicizing the film. It has been repeated so often in print that it has taken on a separate life. Dixon went so far as to promote the film as "Federally endorsed". After controversy over the film had grown, Wilson wrote that he disapproved of the "unfortunate production." D. W. Griffith responded to the film's negative critical reception with his next film Intolerance
Intolerance (film)
Intolerance is a 1916 American silent film directed by D. W. Griffith and is considered one of the great masterpieces of the Silent Era. The three-and-a-half hour epic intercuts four parallel storylines each separated by several centuries: A contemporary melodrama of crime and redemption; a...
.
Soon after World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, in 1918, Emmett J. Scott helped produce and John W. Noble directed The Birth of a Race
The Birth of a Race
The Birth of a Race is a 1918 American silent drama film directed by John W. Noble. It was made as a response to the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation, and was meant to discredit the negative stereotypes perpetuated by the film...
, hoping to capitalize on the success of Griffith's film by presenting a film set during the war. It featured a German-American family divided by the war, with sons fighting on either side, and the one loyal to the United States surviving to be part of the victory.
In 1919, the director/producer/writer Oscar Micheaux
Oscar Micheaux
Oscar Devereaux Micheaux was an American author, film director and independent producer of more than 44 films...
released Within Our Gates
Within Our Gates
Within Our Gates is a silent race film that dramatically expresses the racial situation in America during the violent years of Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, the Great Migration, and the emergence of the "New Negro".-Production background:...
, a response from the African-American community. Notably, he reversed a key scene of Griffith's film by depicting a white man assaulting a black woman.
The film was remixed as Rebirth of a Nation: a "live" cinema experience by DJ Spooky
DJ Spooky
Paul D. Miller , known by his stage name DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid, is a Washington DC-born electronic and experimental hip hop musician whose work is often called by critics or his fans as "illbient" or "trip hop". He is a turntablist, a producer, a philosopher, and an author...
at Lincoln Center, and has toured at many venues around the world including The Acropolis as a live cinema "remix." The remix version was also presented at Paula Cooper Gallery in New York
Ideology and accuracy
University of Houston
The University of Houston is a state research university, and is the flagship institution of the University of Houston System. Founded in 1927, it is Texas's third-largest university with nearly 40,000 students. Its campus spans 667 acres in southeast Houston, and was known as University of...
historian Steven Mintz summarizes its message as follows: Reconstruction was a disaster, blacks could never be integrated
Racial integration
Racial integration, or simply integration includes desegregation . In addition to desegregation, integration includes goals such as leveling barriers to association, creating equal opportunity regardless of race, and the development of a culture that draws on diverse traditions, rather than merely...
into white society as equals, and the violent actions of the Ku Klux Klan were justified to reestablish honest government. The film suggested that the Ku Klux Klan restored order to the post-war South, which was depicted as endangered by abolitionists, freedmen, and carpetbagging
Carpetbagger
Carpetbaggers was a pejorative term Southerners gave to Northerners who moved to the South during the Reconstruction era, between 1865 and 1877....
Republican politicians from the North. This reflects the so-called Dunning School
Dunning School
The Dunning School refers to a group of historians who shared a historiographical school of thought regarding the Reconstruction period of American history .-About:...
of historiography.
W. E. B. Du Bois and other black historians vigorously disputed this interpretation when the film was released. Most historians of all backgrounds today agree with Du Bois, as they note African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
s' loyalty and contributions during the Civil War years and Reconstruction, including the establishment of universal public education. Some historians, such as E. Merton Coulter
E. Merton Coulter
Ellis Merton Coulter was an American historian of the South, author, and a founding member of the Southern Historical Association. He believed in segregation and white supremacy. For four decades, he was a professor at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, where he was chair of the...
in his The South Under Reconstruction (1947), maintained the Dunning School view after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Today the Dunning School position is largely seen as a product of anti-black racism of the early twentieth century, by which many Americans held that black Americans were unequal as citizens.
Veteran film reviewer Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
wrote,
Despite some similarities between the Congressman Stoneman character and Rep. Thaddeus Stevens
Thaddeus Stevens
Thaddeus Stevens , of Pennsylvania, was a Republican leader and one of the most powerful members of the United States House of Representatives...
of Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
, Rep. Stevens did not have the family members described and did not move to South Carolina during Reconstruction. He died in Washington, DC in 1868. However, Stevens was widely rumored to keep a mulatto mistress-housekeeper, who was generously provided for in his will.
The depictions of mass Klan paramilitary actions do not seem to have historical equivalents, although there were incidents in 1871 where Klan groups traveled from other areas in fairly large numbers to aid localities in disarming local companies of the all-black portion of the state militia under various justifications prior to the eventual Federal troop intervention and the organized Klan's continued activities as small groups of "night riders".
The civil rights movement
African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968)
The African-American Civil Rights Movement refers to the movements in the United States aimed at outlawing racial discrimination against African Americans and restoring voting rights to them. This article covers the phase of the movement between 1955 and 1968, particularly in the South...
and other social movements created a new generation of historians, such as scholar Eric Foner
Eric Foner
Eric Foner is an American historian. On the faculty of the Department of History at Columbia University since 1982, he writes extensively on political history, the history of freedom, the early history of the Republican Party, African American biography, Reconstruction, and historiography...
, who led a reassessment of Reconstruction. Building on Du Bois' work but also adding new sources, they focused on achievements of the African American and white Republican coalitions, such as establishment of universal public education and charitable institutions in the South and extension of suffrage
Suffrage
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply the franchise, distinct from mere voting rights, is the civil right to vote gained through the democratic process...
to black men. In response, the Southern-dominated Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
and its affiliated white militias used extensive terrorism, intimidation and outright assassinations to suppress African-American leaders and voting in the 1870s and to regain power.
Significance
Released in 1915, The Birth of a Nation has been credited as groundbreaking among its contemporaries for its innovative application of the medium of film. The content of the work, however, has received widespread criticism for its blatantly racist and fantastical depictions of scenes that are presented onscreen as if in documentary form. Film critic Roger Ebert writes, "Certainly The Birth of a Nation (1915) presents a challenge for modern audiences. Unaccustomed to silent films and uninterested in film history, they find it quaint and not to their taste. Those evolved enough to understand what they are looking at find the early and wartime scenes brilliant, but cringe during the postwar and Reconstruction scenes, which are racist in the ham-handed way of an old minstrel show or a vile comic pamphlet."The film grossed $10 million in its first year of release, and over the next 35 years increased its total to $50 million, holding the mantle of the highest grossing film for a decade.
In 1992, the United States Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
. Despite its controversial story, the film has been praised by film critics such as Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
, who said: "The Birth of a Nation is not a bad film because it argues for evil. Like Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will
Triumph of the Will
Triumph of the Will is a propaganda film made by Leni Riefenstahl. It chronicles the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, which was attended by more than 700,000 Nazi supporters. The film contains excerpts from speeches given by various Nazi leaders at the Congress, including portions of...
, it is a great film that argues for evil. To understand how it does so is to learn a great deal about film, and even something about evil." The website Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, which compiles reviews from various sources, indicates the film has a 100% "fresh" (positive) rating.
According to a 2002 article in the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
, the film facilitated the refounding of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. As late as the 1970s, the Ku Klux Klan continued to use the film as a recruitment tool.
American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
recognition
- AFI's 100 Years... 100 MoviesAFI's 100 Years... 100 MoviesThe first of the AFI 100 Years… series of cinematic milestones, AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies is a list of the 100 best American movies, as determined by the American Film Institute from a poll of more than 1,500 artists and leaders in the film industry who chose from a list of 400 nominated movies...
#44
Sequel
A sequel called The Fall of a NationThe Fall of a Nation
The Fall of a Nation was a 1916 American silent drama film directed by Thomas Dixon, Jr. It is a sequel to the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation, directed by D. W. Griffith, which Dixon, Jr. co-wrote, in attempt in cash in on the success of the controversial first film. The Fall of a Nation is...
was released to theaters one year later, in 1916. The film was directed by Thomas Dixon
Thomas Dixon, Jr.
Thomas F. Dixon, Jr. was an American Baptist minister, playwright, lecturer, North Carolina state legislator, lawyer, and author, perhaps best known for writing The Clansman — which was to become the inspiration for D. W...
, who adapted it from the novel of the same name. The film has three acts and a prologue. Despite its success in the foreign market, the film was not a success among the American audiences. It is considered a lost film
Lost film
A lost film is a feature film or short film that is no longer known to exist in studio archives, private collections or public archives such as the Library of Congress, where at least one copy of all American films are deposited and catalogued for copyright reasons...
.
New opening titles on re-release
One famous part of the film was added by Griffith only on the second run of the film and is missing from most online versions of the film (presumably taken from first run prints.)These are the second and third of three opening title cards which defend the film. The added titles read:
A PLEA FOR THE ART OF THE MOTION PICTURE:
We do not fear censorship, for we have no wish to offend with improprieties or obscenities, but we do demand, as a right, the liberty to show the dark side of wrong, that we may illuminate the bright side of virtue - the same liberty that is conceded to the art of the written word - that art to which we owe the Bible and the works of Shakespeare and if in this work we have conveyed to the mind the ravages of war to the end that war may be held in abhorrence, this effort will not have been in vain.
Various film historians have expressed a range of views about these titles. To Nicholas Andrew Miller, this shows that "Griffith's greatest achievement in The Birth of Nation was that he brought the cinema's capacity for spectacle...under the rein of an outdated by comfortably literary form of historical narrative. Griffith's models...are not the pioneers of film spectacle...but the giants of literary narrative." On the other hand, S. Kittrell Rushing complains about Griffith's "didactic" title-cards, while Stanley Corkin complains that Griffith "masks his idea of fact in the rhetoric of high art and free expression" and creates film which "erodes the very ideal" of "liberty" which he asserts.
See also
- List of films in the public domain
- Lillian Gish filmographyLillian Gish filmographyThese are the films of Lillian Gish.----Silent: 1912 – 1913 – 1914 – 1915 – 1916 – 1917 – 1918 – 1919 – 1920s Post Silent: 1930s – 1940s – 1950s – 1960s – 1970s – 1980s – References-----1912:* An Unseen Enemy...
- Nadir of American race relationsNadir of American race relationsThe "nadir of American race relations" is a term that refers to the period in United States history from the end of Reconstruction through the early 20th century, when racism in the country is deemed to have been worse than in any other period after the American Civil War. During this period,...
- Within Our GatesWithin Our GatesWithin Our Gates is a silent race film that dramatically expresses the racial situation in America during the violent years of Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, the Great Migration, and the emergence of the "New Negro".-Production background:...
External links
- GMU.edu, "Art (and History) by Lightning Flash": The Birth of a Nation and Black Protest
- The Birth of a Nation on Roger EbertRoger EbertRoger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
's list of great movies - The Birth of a Nation on filmsite.org, a web site offering comprehensive summaries of classic films
- The Myth of a Nation by Jonathan Lapper, challenging some of the "firsts" listed by film historians
- Souvenir Guide for The Birth of a Nation, hosted by the Portal to Texas History
- Virtual-History.com, Literature
- W. Scott Poole, Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting (Waco, Texas: Baylor, 2011), 30, 87, 100-101.