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D.W. GriffithThe Birth of a Nation (1915)

In its time, "The Birth of a Nation" was a masterpiece. Its racist undertones and revisionism are quite disturbing, but it is still worth watching for its historical influence.

IMDb entry:
http://imdb.com/title/tt0004972/


This movie is part of the collection: Feature Films

Producer: D.W. Griffith
Audio/Visual: silent, black and white
Keywords: D.W. Griffith; The Clansman; Silent

Creative Commons license: Public Domain

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Reviewer: skybandit - - October 6, 2009
Subject: History
Ku Klux Klan founded 1865
Ku Klux Klan disbanded 1871
Birth of a Nation 1915
Ku Klux Klan recreated 1915
'Nuff said?

Reviewer: LeGrande - - October 5, 2009
Subject: Ponder of Ponders ....
Here are some things that are profoundly amazing about this movie: 1. It is preserved in excellent quality compared to other films that were released in 1915. 2. The movie masterfully suspends reality. So much so that many people actually believed that what was happening on the screen was more like a documentary than a drama. 3. Those not used to watching silent films can still be drawn into the story line, even for the length of the film. 4. The KKK used this film as a recruitment tool even up to the mid-1970s, and I remember seeing an ad for a screening of the film in 1990 for the film's 75th anniversary. I'm sure the KKK was there ready to recruit. 5. This film caused some to think that the court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson was overreaching (because the film portrays blacks as "forever inferior" to whites). 6. It set the tone for civil rights as a violent good v. evil battle; a feeling that still persists among many to this day.

It is definitely worth the 3 hours you'll spend watching it, if for no other reason, than to ponder what I have pondered and to imagine how civil rights might have progressed had the movie not been made.

Reviewer: pepegot1 - - September 24, 2009
Subject: It's not out of date yet, unfortunately
There are those amongst us who are still waiting for the little Colonel to return with his white sheets and remove the Mulato from power. Just watch certain news programs and observe certain politcians to see this latent tendency. It is part of our culture, like it or not.
The film depicts, overtly, what many would like to do covertly today. It is representative of our worst devils and not our better angels. Therefore, it is an important film from a sociological perspective.

Reviewer: Kendra_Nelson@56msn.com - - September 24, 2009
Subject: The Greatest Film On Earth
There Is A 16th President Of America.

Reviewer: Ian_Jones25@msn.com - - September 24, 2009
Subject: Best Film
I Liked This Film Thankyou!

Reviewer: zorr07 - - May 4, 2009
Subject: When the good guys all wore white hoods
D. W. Griffith didn't invent every technique used in The Birth of a Nation. Billy Bitzer was the cinematographer who came up with many including shooting at night. The film represents the culmination of visual strategies to communicate narrative that the film industry had been working on for the first twenty years of its existence.

However, Griffith's work should suffer the same question as Leni Riefenstahl's - Film-Maker or Propagandist? A powerful film, one may ask why can't I praise art made for hate's sake by this son of a confederate army colonel. After all it's part of movie history. This 3 hour propagandist campaign, the first "feature" film, featuring an ignoble revision of history, is a malignancy that pervades our racial mindset even today. Griffith purposely exploited as many stereotypes as possible. The film justified racial segregation, disenfranchisement and brutal murder:

"We of the South have never recognized the right of the negro to govern white men, and we never will. We have never believed him to be the equal of the white man, and we will not submit to his gratifying his lust on our wives and daughters without lynching him." - Benjamin Tillman, U.S. Senator for South Carolina - served 1895 – 1918

Since the film opened on Feb 8, 1915 there was a recorded surge of lynchings in both the north and the south. Included among these is the Leo Frank lynching in August 1915 by a group of prominent men who called themselves the Knights of Mary Phagan.

One can be arrested for yelling "fire" in a crowded theater or for inciting a riot but Griffith's film gets one line of disclaimer for its racist content.

The film's denial of political and social equality is a denial of the U.S. Constitution, America's democratic ideal and very reason for existence. If the film was about communists it would have met a different fate. Its romanticism of [British] colonial fantasies of Aryan racial supremacy in the face of Griffith's revisionist view of Reconstruction was close to being permanently successful in barring blacks from positions of public trust in the United States for most of the last century.

50 million people saw it in the 5 years after its release. Absorbed as truth by a majority, the KKK's heroic portrayal as a special-ops-unit-4-righteousness led to its 1915 rebirth and on October 16, the men who lynched Leo Frank climbed Stone Mountain and burned a giant cross that was visible throughout the city. The imagery of the burning cross, which had not existed in the original Klan, had been introduced via The Birth of a Nation and The Clansman, the book upon which it was based. The anti-Semitic sentiments aroused by that case (Frank was Jewish), along with the ongoing racism fueled by Griffith's film, led William J. Simmons, a failed minister, to establish a new KKK on Thanksgiving night 1915 naming himself Imperial Wizard. In fact, the day the film opened in Atlanta, the local newspaper carried Simmons' announcement of "The World's Greatest Secret, Patriotic, Fraternal, Beneficiary Order," next to the advertisement of the movie. It broke all attendance records even with a $2 ticket price and had 4 runs to capacity audiences during the war years. It proved the major impetus for the reemergence of the Klan and created a nationwide Klan craze.

The new KKK emulated the fictionalized version of the Klan presented in the movie. After WWI in 1920 it grew exponentially when two out-of-work WWI publicists in Atlanta formed a partnership with a prohibition-closed bottle club owner. In 3 years, 3,000 members grew to 3 million due to better organizing techniques accompanied with special screenings of this film. At its peak in the mid-1920s, the KKK included about 15% of the nation's eligible population - 4–5 million men.

The film had a one year run in New York and was re-released in 1924, 1931, and 1938, so it remained in the public psyche for decades.
The sheer power of a film immortalizing wrong as right is what Jews, blacks and whites of good will had to overcome to achieve any semblance of religious and economic freedom, and civil rights and voting rights. Many at the cost of their livelihoods or lives.

A lesson the movie does teach is not to further abuse an already conquered people by trying to annihilate their dignity. You present the opportunity for demagogues to rise up as did Hitler and his Nazi party after the horrendous reparations Germany was forced to pay the Allies after WWI.

The Leopard's Spots is the first novel of Thomas Dixon's Ku Klux Klan trilogy that included The Clansman (Griffith's film's original title) and The Traitor. Dixon wrote them after seeing a performance of Uncle Tom's Cabin and in his anger at the play vowed to romanticize the Clan - his father and grandfather both being members. At the 1915 opening in New York, Dixon told the theater audience that he would have allowed no one but David Wark Griffith, son of a Confederate soldier, to direct the screenplay of his book. Dixon shows how important Griffith's role was in the spreading of this venom to a culture already predisposed to hatred and vengeance. Griffith brought Dixon's flawed Aryan dream for white supremacists, [neo-cons], etc. to a larger audience to create a collective memory that has exacerbated much of the misunderstanding, prejudice, fear, hate, political machinations (the Republican Party's Southern Strategy), pain, torture, death and sheer barbarism of our nation's racial history.

And all this says why it is a great recruitment film for the KKK. Further, Gish is far better in Broken Blossoms.

Reviewer: B-Movie Ben - - April 5, 2009
Subject: Dare we dream of a golden day when the bestial War shall rule no more.
It was an epic when it was made, and still a work of art in cinema history.

The first part show the "gentile" South and the war. It was romanticized to the extent that brother was fighting brother, friend was fighting friend, and in meeting during the war, they remained friends. Nice, but probably not accurate. Still, it made for a good story.

The second half is filled with controversy as the Carpetbaggers invade the South and establish Black rule that is designed to crush the Whites until the Golden Knights of the Ku Klux Klan save society to live in peace. This is the story as presented, not an interpretation.

Despite the historical inaccuracy, it it still a magnificent work with amazing performances by Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Henry B. Walthall, George Siegmann, and others. It is hard to believe that words are not needed to display feelings.

Reviewer: jive5 - - January 17, 2009
Subject: controversial indeed, amazingly shameful
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Reviewer: ericthatsme - - November 11, 2007
Subject: Amazing
I am nothing short of speechless that this film has been placed for download. Although this film is still considered controversial the controversy cannot take away from the fact that this film is a major contribution to American Cinema. D.W. Griffith (The father of American Cinema) has created a truly timeless masterpiece. I own this film and have watched it many times enjoying each viewing more than the last. Well worth taking the time to download and enjoy watching. I hope that this film will soon be followed by D.W. Griffith’s next great piece “Intolerance”, as well as any other masterpieces he created.