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The Birth of a Nation

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The Birth of a Nation

Birth of a Nation One-Sheet
Directed by D. W. Griffith
Produced by D. W. Griffith
Written by Thomas F. Dixon Jr.
Frank E. Woods
D.W. Griffith
Starring Lillian Gish
Henry B. Walthall
Mae Marsh
Music by Joseph Carl Breil (original score)
Cinematography G.W. Bitzer
Editing by D. W. Griffith
Joseph Henabery
James Smith
Rose Smith
Raoul Walsh
Distributed by Epoch Film Co.
Release date(s) February 8, 1915 (Los Angeles, CA)
Running time 190 minutes (at 16 fps)
Country United States
Language English (silent)
Budget $110,000 (estimated)
IMDb profile

The Birth of a Nation is a famously controversial film which promoted the superiority of the white race. It was directed by D.W. Griffith, and was released on February 8, 1915. It was an important film in cinema history for its innovative technical achievements.

Contents

[edit] Overview

The film was based on Thomas Dixon's novels The Clansman and The Leopard's Spots. The film was released in 1915 and has been credited with securing the future of feature length films (any film over 40 minutes in length) as well as solidifying the language of cinema. The film premiered on February 8, 1915, at Clune's Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles, under the title The Clansman, but was retitled for its official East Coast premiere in New York three weeks later (March 3).[citation needed]

The title was changed from The Clansman to The Birth of a Nation to reflect the filmmakers' belief that before the American Civil War, the United States was a loose coalition of states antagonistic toward each other, and that the Northern victory over the breakaway states in the South finally bound the states under one national authority.<ref>Russell Merritt, "Dixon, Griffith, and the Southern Legend." Cinema Journal, Vol. 12, No. 1. (Autumn, 1972).</ref>

The film's controversy is in its premise that the Ku Klux Klan arose to restore order to the post-war South, as it was "endangered" by "uncontrollable" black denizens and their allies, abolitionists, mulattos and carpetbagging Republican politicians from the North. This viewpoint was the dominant view among white American historians of the day, chief among them the Dunning School, but it was vigorously disputed by W.E.B. Du Bois and other black historians of that era, all of whom the Dunning School ignored. White historians would maintain this viewpoint even after World War II — E. Merton Coulter's The South Under Reconstruction was published in 1947 — and it took the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s for historians to rethink Reconstruction and other ideas of the period.[citation needed]

Though lucrative, and also popular among some white movie critics and white movie-goers, the film drew significant protest from blacks upon its release. Premieres of the film were widely protested by the newly founded National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Griffith said he was surprised by the harsh criticism. The Birth of a Nation has been linked to the second emergence of the Ku Klux Klan, which was revived the year of the film's release after a period of non-existence.

The Birth of a Nation was the highest grossing film, taking in more than $10 million[citation needed] at the box office (what would be $300 million in 2006).[citation needed] It is still studied by film and cultural historians alike, and in 1992 the United States Library of Congress deemed it "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. Despite its extremely controversial story, the film continues to get high, if generally conflicted, praise from critics such as Roger Ebert.[1]As

[edit] Production

Hooded Klansmen catch Gus, a black man whom the filmmaker described as "a renegade, a product of the vicious doctrines spread by the carpetbaggers."

The Birth of a Nation pioneered such techniques as deep focus, jump-cut, and facial close-up, which are now considered integral to the industry. It also contains many new cinematic innovations, special effects, and artistic techniques. It shattered box office records at the time and was also the longest film to date (It was approximately 3 hours and 10 minutes long). For these reasons, it was voted one of the "Top 100 American Films" (# 44) by the American Film Institute in 1998.

Griffith agreed to pay The Clansman author Thomas Dixon $10,000 for the rights, but ran out of money and could only afford $2,500 of the original option. For the balance, he offered Dixon 25 percent interest in the picture. Dixon reluctantly agreed. At the time, Dixon's proceeds were the largest sum any author received for a motion picture story - several million dollars.

Although the film made use of some black actors, most were Caucasian actors working in blackface. In keeping with the prevailing Hollywood custom, any actor who was to come in contact with a white actress was played by a white male. For example, the Camerons' maid is both white and obviously male.

Griffith's budget started at $40,000, but the film ultimately cost $110,000 ($2,000,000 in 2006). As a result, Griffith constantly had to seek new sources of capital for his film. A ticket to the film cost a record $2 USD ($36 in 2006). However, it remained the most profitable film of all time until it was dethroned by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937.

West Point engineers provided technical advice on the still unsurpassed Civil War battle scenes and provided Griffith with the masses of artillery used in the film.<ref>"When Hollywood's Big Guns Come Right From the Source" Katharine Q. Seelye, New York Times, June 10, 2002</ref>

[edit] Cast

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The film was presented in two parts divided by an intermission. Part one depicts pre-Civil War America introducing two juxtaposed families: the Northern Stonemans, consisting of abolitionist Congressman Austin Stoneman (based on real-life Reconstruction-era Congressman Thaddeus Stevens), 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 boys visit the Camerons at their South Carolina estate, a pinnacle of the Old South, and all it represents. The eldest Stoneman boy falls in love with Margaret Cameron, and Ben Cameron idolizes a picture of Elsie Stoneman. When the Civil War begins, all of the boys join their respective armies. A black militia (with a white leader) ransacks the Cameron house, attempting to rape all the Cameron women, who are rescued when Confederate soldiers rout the militia. Meanwhile, the youngest Stoneman and two Cameron boys are killed in the war. Ben Cameron is wounded after a heroic battle in which he gains the eponym "the Little Colonel", by which he is referred to for the rest of the film. The Little Colonel is taken to a Northern hospital where he meets Elsie, who is working there as a nurse. The war ends and Abraham Lincoln is assassinated at Ford's Theater, allowing Austin Stoneman and other radical congressmen to "punish" the South for secession with Reconstruction.

Flora Cameron runs away from Gus.
Flora Cameron runs away from Gus.

Part two begins to depict Reconstruction. Stoneman and his mulatto protege, Silas Lynch, go to South Carolina to personally observe their agenda of empowering Southern blacks via election fraud. Meanwhile, Ben, inspired by observing children pretending to be ghosts to scare off black children, devises a plan to reverse perceived powerlessness of Southern whites by forming the Ku Klux Klan, although his membership in the group angers Elsie.

Then Gus, a murderous former slave with designs on white women, crudely proposes to marry Flora. She flees into the forest, pursued by Gus. Trapped on a precipice, Flora leaps to her death to avoid letting herself be raped by a black man. In response, the Klan hunts Gus, lynches him, and leaves his corpse on Lieutenant Governor Silas Lynch's doorstep. In retaliation, Lynch orders a crackdown on the Klan. The Camerons flee from the black militia and hide out in a small hut, home to two former Union soldiers, who agree to assist their former Southern foes in defending their "Aryan birthright," according to the caption.

Meanwhile, with Austin Stoneman gone, Lynch tries to force Elsie to marry him. Disguised Klansmen discover her situation and leave to get reinforcements. The Klan, now at full strength, rides to her rescue and takes the opportunity to evict all of the blacks. Simultaneously, Lynch's militia surrounds and attacks the hut where the Camerons are hiding, but the Klan saves them just in time. Victorious, the Klansmen celebrate in the streets, and the film cuts to the next election where the Klan successfully disenfranchises black voters. The film concludes with a double honeymoon of Phil Stoneman and Margaret Cameron and Ben Cameron with Elsie Stoneman. The final frame shows masses oppressed by a warlike ruler transformed into angelic figures under a Christ-like representation. The final 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."

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Divisive political influence

According to University of Houston film historian Steven Mintz, the message embedded in the film is that Reconstruction was a disaster, that blacks could never be integrated into white society as equals, and that the violent actions of the Ku Klux Klan were justified to reestablish honest government <ref>http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/slaveryfilm.cfm</ref>.

Birth of a Nation was divisive when it was released. Riots broke out in Boston, Philadelphia and other major cities in response to the film's historical distortions, and the film was denied release in Chicago, Ohio, Denver, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Minneapolis. It was said to create an atmosphere that encouraged gangs of whites to attack blacks. In Lafayette, Indiana, a white man killed a black teenager after seeing the movie<ref>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_birth.html</ref>.

Nearly a century later, the film remains controversial. On February 22, 2000, in an article called "A Painful Present as Historians Confront a Nation's Bloody Past", staff writer Claudia Kolker wrote in the Los Angeles Times: "The end of World War I brought both economic crisis, and an anti-Red fever that extended to minority groups and trade unions. Just three years earlier, a defunct Ku Klux Klan leaped back to life with help from the film Birth of a Nation."<ref>http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/316.html</ref>

Woodrow Wilson's History of the American People is quoted in The Birth of a Nation.

The Clansman author Thomas Dixon, a former classmate of President Wilson, arranged to have Birth of a Nation screened at the White House, which was attended by the president, members of his cabinet, and their families. Wilson was reported to have commented of the film that "it is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." In Wilson: The New Freedom by Arthur Link, Wilson's aide, Joseph Tumulty denied the claim and also said "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."<ref>Letter from J. M. Tumulty, secretary to President Wilson, to the Boston branch of the NAACP.</ref> The source for the quote apparently was Dixon himself, who was relentless in his publicizing of the film; he went so far as to promote it as "federally endorsed". However, after controversy over the film had grown Wilson wrote that he disapproved of the "unfortunate production"<ref>Woodrow Wilson to Joseph P. Tumulty, April 28 1915 in Wilson, Papers, 33:86.</ref>.

Several independent black filmmakers released director Emmett J. Scott's The Birth of a Race (1919) in response to The Birth of a Nation. The film that portrayed a positive image of blacks was panned by white critics but well-received by black critics and movie-goers attending segregated theaters. Likewise director/producer/writer Oscar Micheaux released Within Our Gates (1919) in response to The Birth of a Nation.

One measure of the influence of the film is the degree to which it succeeded in changing public opinion toward the South, and the way that it strengthened the Ku Klux Klan in the North. Before Birth of a Nation, the white South remained bitter toward the Northern states and federal government, for both the disastrous Civil War. and for the trampling of the former Confederacy that accompanied Reconstruction. Despite the passage of fifty years, a strong pro-Confederate idealism remained in the South and impeded national ideological reunification. Birth of a Nation attempted to unite Northern and Southern opinions into a cohesive nationalism, partly by blaming the behaviors of carpetbagging blacks and Reconstructionists for keeping the country divided. It carefully avoided criticism of Northern heroes such as Abraham Lincoln, and viewed both the Union and Confederate armies as heroic fighters and both as protagonists. While the Industrial North is not portrayed in a flattering light, this in itself was not necessarily hostile to Northern public opinion, as industrial workers generally did not like their working conditions. Working-class Northerners were thus also led to sympathize with an idealized agrarian society. The success of this attempt is witnessed by the strength of the reformed KKK, which was even stronger in Northern states than Southern.

[edit] Notes

<references />

[edit] "Birth of a Nation" in pop culture

  • In the January issue of the "Beavis and Butthead" comic series, David Van Driessen's class watches "Birth of a Nation" during a field trip in Intercourse, Pennsylvania.
  • On the first episode of Dennis Miller Live, the subject of the show was Violence, and Dennis opened his rant with, "Look, America has always been a violent country. Rent Birth of a Nation if you doubt me."
  • Political rap duo Public Enemy released an album named Rebirth of a Nation in 2006

[edit] References

  • Addams, Jane, in Crisis: A Record of Darker Races, X (May, 1915), 19, 41, and (June, 1915), 88. + *John Hope Franklin, "Propaganda as History" pp. 10-23 in Race and History: Selected Essays 1938-1988 (Louisiana State University Press: 1989); first published in The Massachusetts Review 1979. Describes the history of the novel, The Clansman and this film.
  • Brodie, Fawn M. Thaddeus Stevens, Scourge of the South (New York, 1959) p. 86-93. Corrects the historical record as to Dixon's false representation of Stevens in this film with regard to his racial views and relations with his housekeeper.
  • Chalmers, David M. Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan (New York: 1965) p. 30
  • Cook, Raymond Allen. Fire from the Flint: The Amazing Careers of Thomas Dixon (Winston-Salem, N.C., 1968).
  • Franklin, John Hope, "Propaganda as History" pp. 10-23 in Race and History: Selected Essays 1938-1988 (Louisiana State University Press: 1989); first published in The Massachusetts Review 1979. Describes the history of the novel, The Clan and this film.
  • Franklin, John Hope, Reconstruction After the Civil War, (Chicago, 1961) p. 5-7
  • Korngold, Ralph, Thaddeus Stevens. A Being Darkly Wise and Rudely Great (New York: 1955) pp. 72-76. corrects Dixon's false characterization of Stevens' racial views and of his dealings with his housekeeper.
  • Leab, Daniel J., From Sambo to Superspade, (Boston, 1975) p. 23-39
  • New York Times, roundup of reviews of this film, March 7, 1915.
  • The New Republica, II (March 20, 1915), 185
  • Simkins, Francis B., "New Viewpoints of Southern Reconstruction," Journal of Southern History, V (February, 1939), pp. 49-61.
  • Williamson, Joel, After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina During Reconstruction (Chapel Hill, 1965). This book corrects Dixon's false reporting of Reconstruction, as shown in his novel, his play and this film.

[edit] External links

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