 Tagline: Birth of a Nation (and racial stereotyping?) The Birth Of A Nation made headlines from the day it opened in Los Angeles on February 8, 1915. It became the most successful silent film ever made, grossing over $10 million in its first run; and today, more than eighty years later, it remains America's most controversial cinematic landmark. From the start, the public and the press were fascinated by the audacity and bravura technical achievement of D.W. Griffith's film. Griffith had turned a lurid, negrophobic play called The Clansman into a three-hour Civil War epic that, in sweep and score, set a standard for film spectacle and absorbing historical melodrama. The accompanying publicity campaign set standards, too - for flamboyance, race-baiting and inventiveness. Storyline: Two brothers, Phil and Ted Stoneman, visit their friends in Piedmont, South Carolina: the family Cameron. This friendship is affected by the Civil War, as the Stonemans and the Camerons must join up opposite armies. The consequences of the War in their lives are shown in connection to major historical events, like the development of the Civil War itself, Lincoln's assassination, and the birth of the Ku Klux Klan. Written by Victor Munoz Cast Notes: Lillian Gish (Elsie Stoneman), Mae Marsh (Flora Cameron), Henry B. Walthall (Colonel Ben Cameron), Miriam Cooper (Margaret Cameron), Mary Alden (Lydia Brown), Ralph Lewis [I] (Austin Stoneman), George Siegmann (Silas Lynch), Walter Long [I] (Gus), Robert Harron (Tod Stoneman), Wallace Reid (Jeff, the blacksmith), Joseph Henabery (Abraham Lincoln/13 other bits), Elmer Clifton (Phil Stoneman), Josephine Crowell (Mrs. Cameron), Spottiswoode Aitken (Dr. Cameron), George Beranger (Wade Cameron). User Comment: Gregory Bruce Carlson (unclepoochinski@hotmail.com) Fargo, North Dakota o Whether or not one buys into the long-standing suggestion that D.W. Griffith virtually invented much of the "film grammar" (the close-up and the cross-cut, for example) and the American feature length film used by narrative moviemakers to this day, The Birth of a Nation remains a simple-minded, horrifyingly racist piece of garbage unworthy of its misguided praise. Griffith's pathetic Victorian sensibility -- already on the verge of being old-fashioned at the time of The Birth of a Nation's release in 1915 -- undermines the epic's value as the genesis of film as art, even if its lavish release and exorbitant ticket prices gave cinema its first taste of respectability. Cases in point: the god-awful leap off of a cliff by Mae Marsh to avoid being raped by an emancipated slave and the idiotic, preposterous plotline in which Lillian Gish is to be enthroned alongside a black leader who plans to start a "Negro" nation. So much for Griffith's attitudes about Reconstruction. Summary: America's first major feature is Griffith's folly The following are excerpts from Wikipedia's History: The Birth of a Nation (also known as The Clansman), is a 1915 silent film directed by D. W. Griffith; one of the most innovative of American motion pictures. Set during and after the American Civil War, the film was based on Thomas Dixon's The Clansman, a novel and play. The Birth of a Nation is noted for its innovative technical and narrative achievements, and its status as the first Hollywood "blockbuster." It has provoked great controversy for its treatment of white supremacy and sympathetic account of the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. Plot: This silent film was originally presented in two parts separated by an intermission. Part 1 depicted 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. Part 2 depicts Reconstruction. Stoneman and his mulatto protegé, Silas Lynch, go to South Carolina to observe their agenda of empowering Southern blacks via election fraud. Meanwhile, Ben, inspired by observing white 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. Production: The film was based on Thomas Dixon's novels The Clansman and The Leopard's Spots. Griffith, whose father had served as a colonel in the Confederate Army, agreed to pay Thomas Dixon $10,000 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. Responses: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People , founded in 1909, protested premieres of the film in numerous cities. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 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. Chicago, Denver, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh and St. Louis refused to allow the film to open. The film's inflammatory character was a catalyst for gangs of whites to attack blacks. In Lafayette, Indiana, after seeing the movie, a white man murdered a black teenager. Ideology: - 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.[10] 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. This version was vigorously disputed by W.E.B. Du Bois and other black historians upon its release, and most historians of all backgrounds today, who point out African Americans' 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. However, today this argument is largely seen as a product of Anglo-American racism of the early twentieth century, by which many Americans held that black Americans were unequal as citizens. The civil rights movement and other social movements created a new generation of historians, such as leftist 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. Significance:
And from African Americans.com: Black groups, while aware that a public controversy would only boost ticket sales, were quick to react to the film's blatant racism. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) sent copies of a scathing New Republic review to more than 500 newspapers and issued strong warnings that screening the film could spark rioting. The NAACP even managed to have some of the movie's harshest moments deleted, including a scene proposing that blacks be sent back to Africa as a remedy for the nation's ills. But the efforts of the black organizations were drowned out by the film's runaway box-office success. Perhaps the protesters' biggest victories lay in rallying African Americans around a common cause, and in increasing awareness of the recently created NAACP and other black political groups. While the film is still praised by critics as a cinematic masterpiece, it has also become an important object lesson in how the relationship of popular media to public opinion can perpetuate racial stereotypes. The Blu-ray version was released on 11/22/2011 -- this from Blu-ray.com I've seen Kino's 1993 restoration of Birth of a Nation on DVD, and a few months ago I watched the film streaming on Hulu+, and compared to both this new Blu-ray edition is a revelation. This is the earliest silent movie Kino has yet released in high definition, and it's a prime example of how wonderful these films can now look on home video. As usual, Kino's approach is to do only what is absolutely necessary to optimize the picture. Film grain is kept intact—no smeary DNR here—and the image is free of edge enhancement or other kinds of overly unnatural boosting. The picture has been digitally tinted, but this is to bring the film back to Griffith's original specifications. (Sometimes the tinting does look a bit too bright or saturated to me, but I'm no expert on what the film looked like in 1915, so I'll default to Kino.) Clarity is remarkably improved from the DVD—which is also included in this set—as everything looks more defined and resolved. The tonal dynamics are strong too, with deep blacks and a usually balanced sense of contrast. (Highlights can look a bit blown out in certain scenes.) Of course, the picture does display the expected levels of age-related wear and tear—scratches, specks, judder, and minor warping—but if you watch many silent films you're already used to this. Overall, this transfer makes for a notable advance, and film collectors should have no qualms about upgrading to the Blu-ray. The Birth of a Nation is not a film to watch lightly, but one to study and discuss, as an example of both innovative feature-length storytelling and the complicated racial attitudes that arose out of the country's damaged psyche after the Civil War. Ultimately, all we can really do is recognize the film for what it is—a technical masterpiece marred by a morally bankrupt ideology. Kino's Blu-ray release is a must-own for all serious students of early American cinema. IMDb Rating (03/14/15): 6.9/10 from 15,074 users IMDb Rating (09/29/01): 7.5/10 from 893 users
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