Evidence exists that the film originally included scenes of white slave traders seizing blacks from West Africa and detaining them aboard a slave ship, Southern congressmen in the House of Representatives, Northerners reacting to the results of the 1860 presidential election, the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, a Union League meeting, depictions of martial law in South Carolina, and a battle sequence.
Griffith Films set in South Carolina Films set in the 1860s Films set in the 1870s Films shot in Big Bear Lake, California Films shot in Mississippi Films with screenplays by D.
However, the first aggression in the Civil War, made when the Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in 1861, is not mentioned in the film.
In response, the Southern-dominated Democratic Party and its affiliated white militias had used extensive terrorism, intimidation and outright assassinations to suppress African-American leaders and voting in the 1870s and to regain power. ==Legacy== ===Film innovations=== In his review of The Birth of a Nation in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, Jonathan Kline writes that "with countless artistic innovations, Griffith essentially created contemporary film language ...
Griffith Films set in South Carolina Films set in the 1860s Films set in the 1870s Films shot in Big Bear Lake, California Films shot in Mississippi Films with screenplays by D.
Franklin wrote as recently as the 1970s that the popular journalist Alistair Cooke in his books and TV shows was still essentially following the version of history set out by The Birth of a Nation, noting that Cooke had much sympathy with the suffering of whites in Reconstruction while having almost nothing to say about the suffering of blacks or about how blacks were stripped of almost all their rights after 1877. Veteran film reviewer Roger Ebert wrote: ...
The screenplay is adapted from Thomas Dixon Jr.'s 1905 novel and play The Clansman.
However, Dixon copyrighted the title The Birth of a Nation in 1905, and it was used in the press as early as January 2, 1915, while it was still referred to as The Clansman in October. ===Special screenings=== ====White House showing==== Birth of a Nation was the first movie shown in the White House, in the East Room, on February 18, 1915.
Mary Todd Lincoln Allan Sears as Klansmen Vester Pegg Alma Rubens Mary Wynn Jules White Monte Blue Gibson Gowland Fred Burns Charles King ==Production== ===1911 version=== There was an uncompleted, now lost, 1911 version, titled The Clansman.
In late 1913, Dixon met the film producer Harry Aitken, who was interested in making a film out of The Clansman; through Aitken, Dixon met Griffith.
Dixon was alluding to the fact that Wilson, upon becoming president in 1913, had allowed cabinet members to impose segregation on federal workplaces in Washington, D.C.
Griffith first announced his intent to adapt Dixon's play to Gish and Walthall after filming Home Sweet Home in 1914. Birth of a Nation "follows The Clansman [the play] nearly scene by scene".
The American historian John Hope Franklin suggested that many aspects of the script for The Birth of a Nation appeared to reflect Dixon's concerns more than Griffith's, as Dixon had an obsession in his novels of describing in loving detail the lynchings of black men, which did not reflect Griffith's interests. ===Filming=== Griffith began filming on July 4, 1914 and was finished by October 1914.
The Birth of a Nation, originally called The Clansman, is a 1915 American silent drama film directed by D.
While some sources also credit The Leopard's Spots as source material, Russell Merritt attributes this to "the original 1915 playbills and program for Birth which, eager to flaunt the film's literary pedigree, cited both The Clansman and The Leopard's Spots as sources." According to Karen Crowe, "[t]here is not a single event, word, character, or circumstance taken from The Leopard's Spots....
The principal love theme that was created for the romance between Elsie Stoneman and Ben Cameron was published as "The Perfect Song" and is regarded as the first marketed "theme song" from a film; it was later used as the theme song for the popular radio and television sitcom Amos 'n' Andy. ==Release== ===Theatrical run=== The first public showing of the film, then called The Clansman, was on January 1 and 2, 1915, at the Loring Opera House in Riverside, California.
It was shown on February 8, 1915, to an audience of 3,000 persons at Clune's Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles. The film's backers understood that the film needed a massive publicity campaign if they were to cover the immense cost of producing it.
However, Dixon copyrighted the title The Birth of a Nation in 1905, and it was used in the press as early as January 2, 1915, while it was still referred to as The Clansman in October. ===Special screenings=== ====White House showing==== Birth of a Nation was the first movie shown in the White House, in the East Room, on February 18, 1915.
Vachel Lindsay, a popular poet of the time, is known to have referred to the film as "art by lightning flash." ====Showing in the Raleigh Hotel ballroom==== The next day, February 19, 1915, Griffith and Dixon held a showing of the film in the Raleigh Hotel ballroom, which they had hired for the occasion.
Dixon always vehemently denied having anti-black prejudices—despite the way his books promoted white supremacy—and stated: "My books are hard reading for a Negro, and yet the Negroes, in denouncing them, are unwittingly denouncing one of their greatest friends". In a letter sent on May 1, 1915, to Joseph P.
Tumulty, Wilson's secretary, Dixon wrote: "The real purpose of my film was to revolutionize Northern sentiments by a presentation of history that would transform every man in the audience into a good Democrat...Every man who comes out of the theater is a Southern partisan for life!" In a letter to President Wilson sent on September 5, 1915, Dixon boasted: "This play is transforming the entire population of the North and the West into sympathetic Southern voters.
Because of the lack of success in NAACP's actions to ban the film, on April 17, 1915, NAACP secretary Mary Childs Nerney wrote to NAACP Executive Committee member George Packard: "I am utterly disgusted with the situation in regard to The Birth of a Nation ...
kindly remember that we have put six weeks of constant effort of this thing and have gotten nowhere." Jane Addams, an American social worker and social reformer, and the founder of Hull House, voiced her reaction to the film in an interview published by the New York Post on March 13, 1915, just ten days after the film was released.
Over a century later, a Harvard University research paper found that "[o]n average, lynchings in a county rose fivefold in the month after [the film] arrived." The mayor of Cedar Rapids, Iowa was the first of twelve mayors to ban the film in 1915 out of concern that it would promote race prejudice, after meeting with a delegation of black citizens.
Katharine DuPre Lumpkin recalled watching the film as an 18-year-old in 1915 in her 1947 autobiography The Making of a Southerner: "Here was the black figure—and the fear of the white girl—though the scene blanked out just in time.
Quentin Tarantino has said that he made his film Django Unchained (2012) to counter the falsehoods of The Birth of a Nation. ===Influence=== In November 1915, William Joseph Simmons revived the Klan in Atlanta, Georgia, holding a cross burning at Stone Mountain.
To understand how it does so is to learn a great deal about film, and even something about evil." According to a 2002 article in the Los Angeles Times, the film facilitated the refounding of the Ku Klux Klan in 1915.
It, too, was given the original Breil score and featured the film's original tinting for the first time since its 1915 release.
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), pp. 23–39. New York Times, roundup of reviews of this film, March 7, 1915. The New Republica, II (March 20, 1915), 185 Poole, W.
On April 24, 1916, the Chicago American reported that a white man murdered a black teenager in Lafayette, Indiana, after seeing the film, although there has been some controversy as to whether the murderer had actually seen The Birth of a Nation.
Griffith made a film in 1916, called Intolerance, partly in response to the criticism that The Birth of a Nation received.
A sequel called The Fall of a Nation was released in 1916, depicting the invasion of the United States by a German-led confederation of European monarchies and criticizing pacifism in the context of the First World War.
By the end of 1917, Epoch reported to its shareholders cumulative receipts of $4.8 million, and Griffith's own records put Epoch's worldwide earnings from the film at $5.2 million as of 1919, although the distributor's share of the revenue at this time was much lower than the exhibition gross.
Despite its success in the foreign market, the film was not a success among American audiences, and is now a lost film. In 1918, an American silent drama film directed by John W.
By the end of 1917, Epoch reported to its shareholders cumulative receipts of $4.8 million, and Griffith's own records put Epoch's worldwide earnings from the film at $5.2 million as of 1919, although the distributor's share of the revenue at this time was much lower than the exhibition gross.
In 1920, African-American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux released Within Our Gates, a response to The Birth of a Nation.
In his 1929 book The Tragic Era: The Revolution After Lincoln, Claude Bowers treated The Birth of a Nation as a factually accurate account of Reconstruction.
Dixon has been accused of misquoting Wilson. In 1937 a popular magazine reported that Wilson said of the film, "It is like writing history with lightning.
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.
Simkins, Francis B., "New Viewpoints of Southern Reconstruction", Journal of Southern History, V (February 1939), pp. 49–61. The latest study of the film's making and subsequent career. Williamson, Joel, After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina During Reconstruction (Chapel Hill, 1965).
By 1940 Time magazine estimated the film's cumulative gross rental (the distributor's earnings) at approximately $15 million.
Katharine DuPre Lumpkin recalled watching the film as an 18-year-old in 1915 in her 1947 autobiography The Making of a Southerner: "Here was the black figure—and the fear of the white girl—though the scene blanked out just in time.
A Being Darkly Wise and Rudely Great (New York: 1955) pp. 72–76.
Thaddeus Stevens, Scourge of the South (New York, 1959), pp. 86–93.
Describes the history of the novel The Clan and this film. Franklin, John Hope, Reconstruction After the Civil War (Chicago, 1961), pp. 5–7. Hickman, Roger.
Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan (New York: 1965), p. 30 Franklin, John Hope.
Simkins, Francis B., "New Viewpoints of Southern Reconstruction", Journal of Southern History, V (February 1939), pp. 49–61. The latest study of the film's making and subsequent career. Williamson, Joel, After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina During Reconstruction (Chapel Hill, 1965).
Franklin wrote as recently as the 1970s that the popular journalist Alistair Cooke in his books and TV shows was still essentially following the version of history set out by The Birth of a Nation, noting that Cooke had much sympathy with the suffering of whites in Reconstruction while having almost nothing to say about the suffering of blacks or about how blacks were stripped of almost all their rights after 1877. Veteran film reviewer Roger Ebert wrote: ...
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), pp. 23–39. New York Times, roundup of reviews of this film, March 7, 1915. The New Republica, II (March 20, 1915), 185 Poole, W.
For years Variety had the gross rental listed as $50 million, but in 1977 repudiated the claim and revised its estimate down to $5 million.
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.
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.
In 1992, the Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. ==Plot== The film consists of two parts of similar length.
Griffith may have been a racist politically, but his refusal to find uplift in the South's war against the Union—and, implicitly, in any war at all—reveals him as a cinematic humanist." ===Accolades=== In 1992, the U.S.
According to the silent film website Brenton Film, many home media releases of the film consisted of "poor quality DVDs with different edits, scores, running speeds and usually in definitely unoriginal black and white". One of the earliest high-quality home versions was film preservationist David Shepard's 1992 transfer of a 16mm print for VHS and LaserDisc release via Image Entertainment.
Though broadcast on Channel 4 television and theatrically screened many times, Photoplay's 1993 version was never released on home video. Shepard's transfer and documentary were reissued in the US by Kino Video in 2002, this time in a 2-DVD set with added extras on the second disc.
The American Film Institute recognized the film by ranking it #44 within the AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list in 1998. ===Historical portrayal=== The film remains controversial due to its interpretation of American history.
Both were released on DVD by Image in 1998 and the United Kingdom's Eureka Entertainment in 2000. In the UK, Photoplay Productions restored the Museum of Modern Art's 35mm print that was the source of Shepard's 16 mm print, though they also augmented it with extra material from the British Film Institute.
Both were released on DVD by Image in 1998 and the United Kingdom's Eureka Entertainment in 2000. In the UK, Photoplay Productions restored the Museum of Modern Art's 35mm print that was the source of Shepard's 16 mm print, though they also augmented it with extra material from the British Film Institute.
To understand how it does so is to learn a great deal about film, and even something about evil." According to a 2002 article in the Los Angeles Times, the film facilitated the refounding of the Ku Klux Klan in 1915.
Though broadcast on Channel 4 television and theatrically screened many times, Photoplay's 1993 version was never released on home video. Shepard's transfer and documentary were reissued in the US by Kino Video in 2002, this time in a 2-DVD set with added extras on the second disc.
Griffith's film was remixed in 2004 as Rebirth of a Nation by DJ Spooky.
Norton & Company, 2006). Hodapp, Christopher L., and Alice Von Kannon, Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies (Hoboken: Wiley, 2008) pp. 235–236. Korngold, Ralph, Thaddeus Stevens.
Dixon's proceeds were the largest sum any author had received [up to 2007] for a motion picture story and amounted to several million dollars.
Norton & Company, 2006). Hodapp, Christopher L., and Alice Von Kannon, Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies (Hoboken: Wiley, 2008) pp. 235–236. Korngold, Ralph, Thaddeus Stevens.
In 2011, Kino prepared a HD transfer of a 35 mm negative from the Paul Killiam Collection.
Scott, Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting (Waco, Texas: Baylor, 2011), 30.
In a 2015 Time article, Richard Corliss estimated the film had earned the equivalent of $1.8 billion adjusted for inflation, a milestone that at the time had only been surpassed by Titanic (1997) and Avatar (2009) in nominal earnings. ===Criticism=== Like Dixon's novels and play, Birth of a Nation received considerable criticism, both before and after its premiere.
This version was released on Blu-ray by Kino in the US, Eureka in the UK (as part of their "Masters of Cinema" collection) and Divisa Home Video in Spain. In 2015, the year of the film's centenary, Photoplay Productions' Patrick Stanbury, in conjunction with the British Film Institute, carried out the first full restoration.
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