WASHINGTON — It was the best of mankind. It was the worst of mankind.
The genius of human ingenuity had invented a powerful new medium — the motion picture — but it had done so within the ignorant confines of a story that spewed hatred for fellow human beings.
Exactly 100 years ago today — March 3, 1915 — D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” hit movie theaters nationwide, instantly becoming the most influential, yet most offensive, film of all time.
It’s hard to imagine another film that could ever rival either of those titles.
On one hand, the three-hour epic was the very first blockbuster. In the two decades before “Birth,” most viewers watched nickelodeons through a narrow slot, whether on Broadway in 1894 or in Paris thanks to the Lumiere Brothers in 1895. Runtimes gradually grew longer: George Melies’ “A Trip to the Moon” (1902) ran 13 minutes, Edwin S. Porter’s “The Great Train Robbery” (1903) ran 11 minutes, and Griffith’s own “Musketeers of Pig Alley” (1912) ran 17 minutes. “Birth of a Nation” exploded at 190 minutes, quite literally inventing the movie-going experience we all recognize today.
On the other hand, our modern-day eyes can only watch in horror at the subject matter depicted in that pioneering film. White actors donned blackface to depict African-Americans as crazed rapists. Abolitionists are portrayed as rowdy troublemakers responsible for igniting the Civil War. And members of the Ku Klux Klan are depicted as heroes riding from the rubble to save the day.
Many of these sins hail from the source material, a 1905 play by Thomas Dixon, “The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan.” That’s right. Romance. While the white-supremacist group had faded by the 1870s, “Birth” inspired Methodist preacher William Simmons to reorganize the group in Georgia in 1915, building its membership over the next decade to three million nationwide.
At the same time, the newly formed NAACP — founded in 1909 — vehemently protested the film’s release, forcing Griffith to cut two scenes, including a love scene between a Reconstructionist senator and his mixed-race mistress. Even with the cuts, riots broke out from Boston to Philadelphia, eight states banned its release, and a group of black independent filmmakers banded together to make “The Birth of a Race” (1919), which painted African-Americans in a much more positive light.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=302YMeiDSrI
What would cause Griffith to make such a film? Perhaps it was the loss of his father, a former Confederate officer, who was wounded in the war and died when Griffith was just 10 years old. Or perhaps it was a wider “gone with the wind” nostalgia for the Antebellum South. Remember, “Birth” arrived in theaters just 50 years after the war ended in 1865. The wounds were still very fresh.
Whatever the reason, a guilt-ridden Griffith repeatedly tried to make amends. His very next film, “Intolerance” (1916), told four interweaving stories about man’s inhumanity to man throughout history. The epic masterpiece was the ultimate mea culpa attempt by Griffith, who later re-edited “Birth” to remove the KKK references in a much shorter version in 1921.
While the truncated version is admirable in moral standards, it’s important to study the original three-hour feature for its technical cinematic achievements. As Griffith’s favorite star Lillian Gish said, “He gave us the grammar of filmmaking.” Indeed, Griffith had developed a new visual language, as brilliantly assessed by Tim Dirks of AMC Filmsite:
- The use of ornate title cards
- Special use of subtitles graphically verbalizing imagery
- Its own original musical score written for an orchestra
- The introduction of night photography (using magnesium flares)
- The use of outdoor natural landscapes as backgrounds
- The definitive usage of the still-shot
- Elaborate costuming to achieve historical authenticity and accuracy
- Many scenes innovatively filmed from many different and multiple angles
- The technique of the camera “iris” effect (expanding or contracting circular masks to either reveal and open up a scene, or close down and conceal a part of an image)
- The use of parallel action and editing in a sequence (Gus’ attempted rape of Flora and the KKK’s rescues of Elsie from Lynch and of Ben’s sister Margaret)
- Extensive use of color tinting for dramatic or psychological effect in sequences
- Moving, traveling or “panning” camera tracking shots
- The effective use of total-screen close-ups to reveal intimate expressions
- Beautifully crafted, intimate family exchanges
- The use of vignettes seen in “balloons” or “iris-shots” in one portion of a darkened screen
- The use of fade-outs and cameo profiles (a medium closeup in front of a blurry background)
- The use of lap dissolves to blend or switch from one image to another
- High-angle shots and the abundant use of panoramic long shots
- The dramatization of history in a moving story – an example of an early spectacle or epic film with historical costuming and many historical references (e.g., Mathew Brady’s Civil War photographs)
- Impressive, splendidly staged battle scenes with hundreds of extras (made to appear as thousands)
- Extensive cross-cutting between two scenes to create a montage-effect and generate excitement and suspense (e.g., the scene of the gathering of the Klan)
- Expert story-telling, with the cumulative building of the film to a dramatic climax
After witnessing such a barrage of new cinematic techniques, famed critic James Agee wrote: “He achieved what no other known man has achieved. To watch his work is like being witness to the beginning of melody, or the first conscious use of the lever or the wheel; the emergence, coordination and first eloquence of language; the birth of an art: and to realize that this is all the work of one man.”
Likewise, during a private screening at the White House, President Woodrow Wilson exclaimed: “It’s like writing history with lightning!” He also added, “And my only regret is that it is all terribly true.”
And so, somewhere between the brilliant technical innovation and the blinding social ignorance, we’re left with a monumental piece of work that squats like a dark reminder of our past.
When the Library of Congress added “Birth” to the National Film Registry in 1992, it labeled the film a “controversial, explicitly racist, but landmark American film masterpiece.”
When “Forrest Gump” (1994) set out to paint America’s politically-divided history, it started by inserting Tom Hanks in a black-and-white flashback using actual footage from “Birth.”
And when the American Film Institute ranked its Top 100 Movies in 1998, “Birth” ranked as high as No. 44. Tellingly, when the list was revamped for its 10th anniversary in 2007, “Birth” was noticeably replaced by Griffith’s “Intolerance” — a change that shows how Hollywood wants to remember itself.
In the end, we must simply view “The Birth of a Nation” as an important time capsule. We can condemn the film’s blatantly racist message, whilst appreciating the creation of a medium that would eventually promote inclusion, from “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962) to “Giant” (1956), “In the Heat of the Night” (1967) to “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” (1967), “Glory” (1989) to “Driving Miss Daisy” (1989), “Do the Right Thing” (1989) to “Boyz n the Hood” (1991). Over the past decade, we’ve also seen both “Crash” (2004) and “12 Years a Slave” (2013) win the Academy Award for Best Picture.
As for the acting ranks, we’ve come a long way since white actors in blackface — but it’s been a long, slow journey of progress from such a low bar. In the first 25 years since “Birth” (1915-1940), just one black actor won an Oscar (Hattie McDaniel). In the next 25 years (1941-1965), we added only one more (Sidney Poitier). In the next 25 years (1966-1990), we added three more (Louis Gossett Jr., Denzel Washington and Whoopi Goldberg). And in the most recent 25 years (1991-2015), we’ve added an additional ten (Cuba Gooding Jr., Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Morgan Freeman, Jamie Foxx, Forest Whitaker, Jennifer Hudson, Mo’Nique, Octavia Spencer and Lupita Nyong’o).
Ten in the last 25 years is certainly progress, but it’s hardly equality (it’s less than one every other year). Look no further than this year’s Oscars for a lack of diversity. Still, as John Legend and Common took the stage to sing the Oscar-winning song from “Selma,” tears streamed down faces in the audience. These tears marked 100 years since cinema’s ultimate shame. And there, quietly in the background, a hidden message emerged: the white performers stood in silence, listening, transforming the tears of pain into tears of joy for “The Growth of a Nation” since its ignorant “Birth.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25bAn6iAkcc
