The Birth of a Nation (1915)

User Rating:

7.1/10   

Director:

D.W. Griffith

Writers:

Thomas F. Dixon Jr. (novel)
Thomas F. Dixon Jr. (play) ...

Release Date:

3 March 1915 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | History | Romance | War | Western

Tagline:

Mighty Spectacle

Plot:

The Civil War divides friends and destroys families, but that's nothing compared to the anarchy in the black-ruled South after the war.

Plot Keywords:

Civil War | Lincoln Assassination | Ku Klux Klan | Assassination | Public Domain

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Lillian Gish	...	Elsie Stoneman
Mae Marsh	...	Flora Cameron
Henry B. Walthall	...	Col. Ben Cameron (as Henry Walthall)
Miriam Cooper	...	Margaret Cameron
Mary Alden	...	Lydia Brown
Ralph Lewis	...	Austin Stoneman
George Siegmann	...	Silas Lynch (as George Seigmann)
Walter Long	...	Gus
Robert Harron	...	Tod Stoneman
Wallace Reid	...	Jeff (blacksmith) (as Wallace Reed)
Joseph Henabery	...	Abraham Lincoln / 13 other bits (as Jos. Henabery)
Elmer Clifton	...	Phil Stoneman
Josephine Crowell	...	Mrs. Cameron
Spottiswoode Aitken	...	Dr. Cameron
George Beranger	...	Wade Cameron (as J.A. Beringer)

Also Known As:

In the Clutches of the Ku Klux Klan (USA) (cut version)
The Birth of the Nation; Or The Clansman (second copyright title)
The Clansman (USA) (Los Angeles première title)

Runtime:

190 min (16 fps) | USA:125 min (video version) | USA:187 min (DVD) | Argentina:165 min

Country:

USA

Colour:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Silent

Certification:

Canada:PG (Manitoba) | Argentina:Atp | South Korea:15 (2002) | UK:15 (video rating) | UK:U (original rating) | Sweden:15 | Canada:G (Quebec)

Filming Locations:

Big Bear Lake, California, USA

Company:

David W. Griffith Corp.

Trivia:

The original title "The Clansman" was jettisoned for being too tame given the breadth and scope of the subject matter.

Goofs:

Continuity: The position of the window in the small cabin changes.

Quotes:

Elsie Stoneman: [Ben is to be hanged. Elsie has an idea] We will ask mercy from the Great Heart.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Family Ties: Birth of a Keaton: Part 1 (#3.16)" (1985)

Intersections of film and history

To begin with, let me say that I in no way advocate the views of "The Birth of a Nation." As a person of color, I find the content's film to be almost entirely offensive, and more than anything, sad. As a lover of film and history, however, I understand the film's enormous value.

Modern viewers of "The Birth of a Nation" seem to attack its proponents based on a belief that to appreciate a film is to be entertained by it. This, of course, is not the case - if cinema could only be entertaining, it could never have become the remarkable art form it is. "The Birth of a Nation," while ostensibly created to entertain, is of crucial historical and social value today. Many of its themes - race fear, race war, the myth of the Old South, myths of Black and White sexuality - remain relevant and troubling ninety years after the film's release.

"The Birth of a Nation" is designed, from beginning to end, to lament the fall of the Old South and justify the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. It exploits the postbellum characterization of Black men as sex-crazed and violent, as well as preserving the antebellum stereotype of Black people as simple-minded, childlike and chaotic. White people are presented as well-mannered and well-educated sophisticates longing for a sort of Jeffersonian fairness and fighting to attain it. White folks, the film would have us believe, were fair slaveholders who cared for their childlike slaves, and who were wronged by a Northern occupation that allowed those slaves to become wicked masters.

Underlying this (unquestionably offensive) view of the South are the tangled anxieties of White Southerners. The Old South had fallen; consequently, the institution of oppression used to maintain social order and status was swept away and replaced by an awkward and poorly managed system of reconstruction that sought to provide land, welfare and rights to the newly freed slave community. White Southern men most likely felt emasculated by their failed rebellion; this sense was greatly underscored by the nullification of Confederate currency, the division of land to provide for the Black community, and the threatening presence of a Black vote. It is crucial to remember that, while slavery was unquestionably the major impetus for the Civil War, Southerners rarely saw slavery as a prime issue, and Northerners were largely in disagreement about it; to the South, the war was about sovereignty and the two hundred year-old threat of Northern hegemony, and the federal systems of protection afforded to the Black community served as a constant reminder to White Southerners that their "civilization" was crushed. The Black community became a living symbol for Northern invasion; the "negro manipulated by the North" threatened to take away all White Southern male entitlement - land, political power, and wealth. The central symbol for this was Black male sexual aggression.

The Ku Klux Klan, in the world of "The Birth of a Nation," is the policing arm of the Southern White male imperative to protect land, children, women and honor. It is, in fact, the last show of force for the archaic notion of Southern honor - a "knighthood" former Confederate soldiers attempting to cling to an outmoded sense of honor and glory through terror, intimidation and propaganda. "The Birth of a Nation" is a rare view into how that group viewed itself and its cause.

The Klan was all but dead in 1915, but race issues and racial violence were still very much alive, through such institutions and events as Jim Crow, peonage and the 1908 race riot in Springfield, Illinois. The truly disturbing thing about this film, then, isn't its racially charged content, but its reception. "The Birth of a Nation" was a runaway hit, in spite of protests. Its success reveals the disturbing mentality of America in 1915, and I suspect that White viewers unable to overcome the film's offensive content in order to understand its historical and technical value are reacting to an impulse to distance themselves from that mentality. This is probably a good thing; however, to claim that the film no longer has relevance and portrays an extinct mode of thinking is short-sighted and quite simply wrong. Jim Crow, peonage and the Reconstruction-era Klan are gone, but they have been replaced by an overwhelmingly Black and Latino prison population, project housing and a conglomerate of Neo-Nazi groups and right-wing religious organizations who continue to agitate on the grounds of race. Every time we say, "this isn't my problem," or, "those people need to learn to take care of themselves," or, "The war has been over for 150 years! Give it a rest," we become the ignorant White Southerners of "The Birth of a Nation." The film records a mentality which has been with us for hundreds of years, is still with us, and will remain with us unless we pay attention to what our films are trying to tell us, in spite of themselves.