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The Birth of a Nation (1915), directed by D.W. Griffith, is one of the most significant yet deeply controversial landmarks in cinema history. Originally titled The Clansman, it was America’s first feature-length motion picture. While it revolutionized filmmaking through its technical innovations, the film is widely condemned as white supremacist propaganda that actively glorified the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and fueled their 20th-century revival. [1, 2, 3, 4] WIKIPEDIA
THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915) accurately reflects the Dunning School of Thought, which, while recognized by most today (myself among them) as nonsense was what the majority of people believed. They had the same view of my Irish ancestors.
In his spoken word into to the sound release of THE BIRTH Griffith states, “The Klan was needed then.” In both the silent and sound versions of THE BIRTH Griffith made it clear the Negro was misled by corrupt white and not responsible for his actions. While the vast majority of contemporary writers choose to ignore this James Agee did not:”This was the one time in movie history that a man of great ability worked freely, in an unspoiled medium, for an unspoiled audience, on a majestic theme which involved all that he was; and brought to it, besides his abilities as an inventor and artist, absolute passion, pity, courage, and honesty. The Birth of a Nation is equal with Brady’s photographs, Lincoln’s speeches, Whitman’s war poems; for all its imperfections and absurdities it is equal, in fact, to the best work that has been done in this country. And among moving pictures it is alone, not necessarily as “the greatest”—whatever that means—but as the one great epic, tragic film.
“(Today, The Birth of a Nation is boycotted or shown piecemeal; too many more or less well-meaning people still accuse Griffith of having made it an anti-Negro movie. At best, this is nonsense, and at worst, it is vicious nonsense. Even if it were an anti-Negro movie, a work of such quality should be shown, and shown whole. But the accusation is unjust. Griffith went to almost preposterous lengths to be fair to the Negroes as he understood them, and he understood them as a good type of Southerner does. I don’t entirely agree with him; nor can I be sure that the film wouldn’t cause trouble and misunderstanding, especially as advertised and exacerbated by contemporary abolitionists; but Griffith’s absolute desire to be fair, and understandable, is written all over the picture; so are degrees of understanding, honesty, and compassion far beyond the capacity of his accusers. So, of course, are the salient facts of the so-called Reconstruction years.)”–AGEE ON FILM.
- The Second Half (Reconstruction): Presents a highly revisionist, racist distortion of history. It depicts newly freed African Americans (often played by white actors in blackface) and Northern “carpetbaggers” as corrupt, aggressive, and unfit for citizenship. The narrative culminates in Confederate Colonel Ben Cameron founding the Ku Klux Klan, which the film portrays as a heroic vigilante force saving the South. –Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History | +3
1. Presents a highly revisionist, racist distortion of history.
No.
The BBC’s Tom Brook is wrong about THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915). Absolutely wrong.Font Size
https://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?t=19597
Did BBC Journalist Tom Brook ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Brook ) choose to be willfully uninformed?
THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915) is neither anti-Negro nor racist.
The number TWO reason THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915) can not be called racist, nor can the film’s director nor anyone else is that we know from Science the idea of race itself is false.
The idea is unarguably false.
When I see books and motion picture documentaries describing the picture and its director as racist by people should by now know better I am seeing lynch mob mentality at work.When I read authors such as Roger Ebert, Melvyn Stokes, Dick Lehr, Tom Brook https://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?t=19597 at work I see the exact same hysteria being set in motion that the authors of lynch mobs always set in motion.More than one has called the picture and its director evil. Neither THE BIRTH OF A NATION nor its director are evil.People do this are.
Griffith based on a novel and on the play based on that novel Both are works of fiction.
However he grounded his picture at a time when no one did in solid research. Thus when we see historical events happening in his picture Griffith provides the source from which he drew. When he stated the facts presented in his picture were true that is what he meant. Nor is it particularly difficult today for anyone to check his facts. Woodrew Wilson’s HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE can be viewed on line: https://archive.org/details/historyofamerica01wils_0 .
I have no reason to endorse The Ku Klux Klan. The revived Klan was against not only Negroes but also the Irish, The Italians, the Jews, Roman Catholics and many others. It was also anti-D. W, Griffith and several of his pictures. I am Irish (my dad’s side. He was Roman Catholic) and English (my mother’s side. She was Church of England). Those two had the backbone to stand up to their families. I have the backbone through them to stand up to ignorance. The est repository of ignorance it seems is in the halls of academia. As I am Irish Roman Catholic my ancestors are on the Klan’s hate list.
The first Black Senator, Hiram Revels, wrote a letter to President Grant which presents the situation as Griffith presents it: https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/revelsletter , Revels makes it clear corrupt whites were doing everything they could to exploit Negroes knowing the blame would bttached not to them but to those they used as puppets.Booker T. Washington, in his book, UP FROM SLAVERY, in the chapter on RECONSTRUCTION, states the same: https://archive.org/details/upfromslaveryaut00washuoft/page/80/mode/2up .
2. It depicts newly freed African Americans (often played by white actors in blackface) and Northern “carpetbaggers” as corrupt, aggressive, and unfit for citizenship.
Griffith used Blackface. Yes, he did. Black actors were allowed however they could not under the law touch white actors unless acting as servants. To make it absolutely clear to legal authorities Griffith used white actors clearly in Blackface. Informed writers know this.
In THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915) Gus, played by Walter Long, the freed slave, has been told he can marry any woman he wants. He wants Flora (played by Mae Marsh). When he tells her he wants to marry her she has no knowledge of who he is. Take skin color out of it. Any woman young or old approached by a man she does not know who says, “I want to marry you,” is going to be met by fear and by refusal. What Gus does not understand is that while he has the right to marry any woman he wants she has the right to say, “No.”
Ultimately THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915) is about the right to say, “No.”
David Wark Griffith handled the turbulent scenes (riots, rescues) as they are meant to be handled. Today everyone from Steven Spielberg, Spike Lee, Quentin Tarantino to you name it handles the same scenes the same way.
In a feature in the Canadian Film publication TAKE ONE ( https://archive.org/details/take-one-1973-09 ) asked id D. W. Griffith was a racist his Black chauffeur says, “Griffith was a paternal racist.”
Paternal means fatherly. Griffith was fatherly to everyone regardless of skin shade.
David Wark Griffith is the father of the cinema.
He more than deserves the respect he is not being given.
He is getting that respect from me.
As for THE KU KLUX KLAN, the Clan in Griffith’s picture is not the Klan that rose in its wake. Was Griffith responsible for the revived Klan? Was Stanley Kubrick responsible for the people who beat homeless men to death in the wake of CLOCKWORK ORANGE? The answer to both questions is no.
When people are unable to get help from the people in authority we have always turned to the only path available whether that was Robin Hood and his outlaws in the days of King John, Don Corleone in the days of THE GODFATHER or Nelson Mandela.
THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915) accurately reflects the prevailing view of the day, THE DUNNING SCHOOL OF THOUGHT:
the Dunning School viewed Black Americans include:- Incapacity for Democracy: They argued that granting African Americans the right to vote and political power during the 1865–1877 Reconstruction era was a tragic mistake and an “unnatural” inversion of racial hierarchy. [1, 2, 3]
- Portrayal of “Negro Rule”: They characterized Black political participation as corrupt, incompetent, and destructive, famously labeling the period as a “tragic era of negro misrule”. [1, 2, 3]
- Paternalistic or Dehumanizing Stereotypes: They frequently depicted freed Black individuals as childlike, passive, or easily manipulated tools of corrupt Northern “carpetbaggers”. [1, 2, 3]
- Justification for White Supremacy: They viewed violent white Southern resistance, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, and the eventual implementation of Jim Crow segregation and disenfranchisement not as civil rights violations, but as a necessary and “inevitable” restoration of order and civilized governance. [1, 2, 3]
Interestingly enough that is my Irish ancestors were also viewed as were Italians. As for the Jews, well their treatment was beyond contempt.
Times have changed for the better. David Wark Griffith saw the motion picture as a literal light burning in the dark with the power to dispel ignorance.
His pictures speak to his conviction. In essence his best pictures, including THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915) are sermons.
Originally Griffith was to receive 48% of profits from THE BIRTH. He received 22% and signed away his rights to the picture after receiving it. He got $1 million which he put into his next picture, INTOLERANCE.
This is why he was unable to prevent THE BIRTH (originally 315 minutes) from being re-issued in a severely cut down sound 100 minute version which by the 1970s had had the prologues removed and was closer to 80 minutes.
In the prologues to that version he stated, “THE KLAN WAS NEEDED THEN.” By implication he stated the Klan was not needed now.
Speaking to Barnet Braverman in 1941 Griffith stated, “If THE BIRTH OF A NATION were done again it would have to be much clearer. Although the picture was made with no intention of embarrassing the Negro, as it stands today , it should not be shown to general; audiences. The Negro race has had enough of its share of trouble, more than enough of its share of injustice, oppression, tragedy, suffering and sorrow. And because of the social progress the Negroes have achieved in the face of these handicaps, it is best that THE BIRTH OF A NATION in its present form be withheld from public exhibition.–Page 8, Fred Silva, FOCUS ON THE BIRTH OF A NATION.
To my mind, is not to his detractors, David Wark Griffith clearly is a much better human being than his detractors like to present. Not only that he is a much better human being than all of them as one.
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