The Birth of a Nation is a film directed by D.W. Griffith, which was released on February 8, 1915. It was one of the most popular films of the silent era, and was important in cinema history for its innovative technical achievements. The film attempts to provide historical justification for segregation. In the sympathetic depiction of the lynching of a black man by a white mob, the film affirms and promotes the cultural milieu that supported the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, which led mobs of white people wearing white sheets and hoods over their faces in the lynching of black people.

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 an hour 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).

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.Russell Merritt, "Dixon, Griffith, and the Southern Legend." Cinema Journal, Vol. 12, No. 1. (Autumn, 1972).

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.

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.

Until The Big Parade surpassed it in 1925, The Birth of a Nation was the highest grossing film, taking in more than $10 million at the box office (what would be $300 million in 2006). 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.^*

Cast

• Mary Alden
• Elmer Clifton
• Robert Cheek
• Miriam Cooper
• Josephine Crowell
• Kevin Flavin
• Sam De Grasse
• Lillian Gish
• Robert Harron
• Mae Marsh
• Wallace Reid
• Madame Sul-Te-Wan
• Henry B. Walthall

Production

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 played in blackface. In particular, any actor who was to come in contact with a white actress was played in blackface. 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 Civil War battle scenes and provided Griffith with artillery."When Hollywood's Big Guns Come Right From the Source" Katharine Q. Seelye, New York Times, June 10, 2002

Plot summary

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 and taken to a Northern hospital where he meets Elsie, 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. Part two begins to depict Reconstruction. Stoneman and his mulatto sidekick, 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, 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 touched 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."

Divisive political influence

The message embedded in the film was 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, said University of Houston film historian Steven Mintz.http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/slaveryfilm.cfm

Birth of a Nation was divisive. 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, 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 moviehttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_birth.html.

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."http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/316.html

Wilson-quote-in-birth-of-a-nation.jpg|thumb|left|300px| Woodrow Wilson's History of the American People is quoted in The Birth of a Nation.]]

Birth of a Nation premiered at the White House at the invitation of President Wilson but, after seeing the film, Wilson wrote that he disapproved of the "unfortunate production"Woodrow Wilson to Joseph P. Tumulty, April 28 1915 in Wilson, Papers, 33:86.. Wilson's aide, Joseph Tumulty, 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."Letter from J. M. Tumulty, secretary to President Wilson, to the Boston branch of the NAACP. Wilson, however, held repeated private viewings of Birth of a Nation at the White House.

In Wilson: The New Freedom by Arthur Link, Tumulty denied what some film historians say Wilson said: "It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." The source for the quote apparently was The Clansman author Thomas Dixon himself, who was a former classmate of Wilson's and arranged the White House screening. However, it should be noted that Wilson, while president of Princeton University, fought integration, and as president of the United States, he ordered the resegregation of the federal government.

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 Directer/Producer/writter Oscar Micheaux released Within Our Gates(1919} in responce to The Birth of a Nation.

Notes