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Intolerance(film)
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Intolerance
Intolerance (film).jpg
Theatrical poster
Directed by
D. W. Griffith
Produced by
D. W. Griffith
Written by
D.W. Griffith
Hettie Grey Baker
Tod Browning
Anita Loos
Mary H. O'Connor
Frank E. Woods
Starring
Vera Lewis
Ralph Lewis
Mae Marsh
Robert Harron
Constance Talmadge
Lillian Gish
Josephine Crowell
Margery Wilson
Frank Bennett
Elmer Clifton
Miriam Cooper
Alfred Paget
Music by
Joseph Carl Breil
Julián Carrillo
Carl Davis(for 1989 restoration)
Cinematography
Billy Bitzer
Edited by
D. W. Griffith
James Smith
Rose Smith
Distributed by
Triangle Distributing Corporation
Release dates
1916
Running time
210 minutes (original version)
197 minutes (most modern cuts)
Country
U.S.A
Language
Silent film
English intertitles
Budget
$385,907[1]
Intoleranceis a 1916 silent filmdirected by D. W. Griffithand is considered one of the great masterpieces of the Silent Era.[2]The three-and-a-half hour epic intercuts four parallel storylines, each separated by several centuries: (1) A contemporary melodramaof crime and redemption; (2) a Judeanstory: Christ’s mission and death; (3) a Frenchstory: the events surrounding the St. Bartholomew's Day massacreof 1572; and (4) a Babylonianstory: the fall of the Babylonian Empireto Persia in 539 BC. Each story had its own tint in the original print.[2]The scenes are linked by shots of a figure representing Eternal Motherhood, rocking a cradle.[2]
Intolerancewas made partly in response to criticism of Griffith's previous film, The Birth of a Nation(1915),[3]which was criticized by the NAACPand other groups as perpetuating racial stereotypesand glorifying the Ku Klux Klan.[4]
Contents [hide]
1Storylines
2Cast
3Production
4Reception
5Influence
6Versions
7See also
8References
9External links
Storylines[edit]
[icon] This section requires expansion. (December 2012)
This complex film consists of four distinct, but parallel, stories—intercut with increasing frequency as the film builds to a climax—that demonstrate mankind's persistent intolerance throughout the ages. The film sets up moral and psychological connections among the different stories. The timeline covers approximately 2,500 years:
1.The ancient "Babylonian" story(539 BC) depicts the conflict between Prince Belshazzarof Babylonand Cyrus the Greatof Persia. The fall of Babylon is a result of intolerance arising from a conflict between devotees of two rival Babylonian gods—Bel-Mardukand Ishtar.
2.The Biblical "Judean" story(c. 27 AD) recounts how—after the Wedding at Canaand the Woman Taken in Adultery—intolerance led to the Crucifixionof Jesus. This sequence is the shortest of the four.
3.The Renaissance "French" story(1572) tells of the religious intolerance that led to the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacreof Protestant Huguenotsby Catholicroyals.
4.The American "Modern" story(c. 1914) demonstrates how crime, moral puritanism, and conflicts between ruthless capitalists and striking workers help ruin the lives of marginal Americans. To get more money for his spinster sister's charities, a mill owner orders a 10% pay cut on his workers' wages. A workers strike is crushed and The Boy and The Dear One make their way to another city; she lives in poverty and he turns to crime; after they marry he tries to break free of crime but is framed for theft by his ex boss. While he is in prison, his wife must endure their child being taken away by the same "moral uplift society" that instigated the strike. Upon his release from prison, he discovers his ex-boss attempting to rape his wife. A struggle begins and in the confusion the girlfriend of the boss shoots and kills the boss. She escapes and The Boy is convicted and sentenced to the gallows. A kindly policeman helps The Dear One find the real killer and together they try to reach the Governor in time so her reformed husband won't be hanged.
Breaks between the differing time periods are marked by the symbolic image of a mother rocking a cradle, representing the passing of generations. One of the unusual characteristics of the film is that many of the characters don't have names. Griffith wished them to be emblematicof human types. Thus, the central female character in the modern story is called The Dear One. Her young husband is called The Boy, and the leader of the local Mafiais called The Musketeer of the Slums. Critics and film theorists indicate these names show Griffith's sentimentalism, which was already hinted at in The Birth of a Nation, with names such as The Little Colonel.
File:Intolerance (1916).ogv
Play media
Intolerance
Lillian Gishas "Eternal Motherhood"
Cast[edit]
In order of appearance
Lillian Gishas Eternal Motherhood
Vera Lewisas Mary T. Jenkins
Mae Marshas The Dear One
Fred Turneras The Dear One's father, a worker at the Jenkins Mill
Robert Harronas The Boy
Josephine Crowellas Catherine de Medici, the Queen-mother
Joseph Henaberyas Admiral Coligny
Constance Talmadgeas Marguerite of Valois
W. E. Lawrenceas Henry of Navarre
Margery Wilsonas Brown Eyes
Eugene Palletteas Prosper Latour
Sam de Grasseas Mr. Jenkins, mill boss
Constance Talmadgeas The Mountain Girl (second role in film)
Elmer Cliftonas The Rhapsode, a warrior-singer
Tully Marshallas High Priest of Bel-Marduk
The Ruth St. Denis Dancers[5]as Dancing girls
Alfred Pagetas Prince Belshazzar
Carl Stockdaleas King Nabonidus, father of Belshazzar
Elmo Lincolnas The Mighty Man of Valor, guard to Belshazzar
Seena Owenas The Princess Beloved, favorite of Belshazzar
Miriam Cooperas The Friendless One, former neighbor of the Boy and Dear One
Walter Longas Musketeer of the Slums
Bessie Loveas The Bride
George Walshas The Bridegroom
Howard Gayeas The Nazarene
Lillian Langdonas Mary, the Mother
Spottiswoode Aitkenas Brown Eyes' father
George Siegmannas Cyrus the Great
Max Davidsonas tenement neighbor of Dear One
Douglas Fairbanksas Drunken Soldier with monkey (uncredited extra)
Lloyd Ingrahamas Judge (Modern Story)
Tom Wilsonas The Kindly Officer (Kindly Heart)
Ralph Lewisas The Governor
Production[edit]
Belshazzar's feastin the central courtyard of Babylon from Intolerance.
Left to right: D. W. Griffith, Billy Bitzer(behind the Pathé camera), Dorothy Gishwatching from behind Bitzer, Karl Brownkeeping script, and Miriam Cooperin profile, in a production still for Intolerance.
Intolerancewas a colossal undertaking featuring monumental sets, lavish period costumes, and more than 3,000 extras. Griffith began shooting the film with the Modern Story (originally titled "The Mother and the Law"), whose planning predated the great commercial success The Birth of a Nation(which had made $48 million, about $678 million in 2014[6]), then greatly expanded it to include the other three parallel stories under the theme of intolerance.
Actual costs to produce Intoleranceare unknown, but best estimates are close to $2.5 million (about $47 million in 2014), an astronomical sum in 1916.[6]The film was by far the most expensive made at that point. When the film became a flopat the box-office, the burden was so great that in 1918 Triangle Film Corporationwas put up for sale.
A detailed account of the film’s production is told in William M. Drew's 1986 book D.W. Griffith's Intolerance: Its Genesis and Its Vision.[7]
Reception[edit]
Upon its initial release, Intolerancewas a commercial failure. Despite this, Intolerancehas received very positive reviews. Intolerancehas been called "the only film fugue".[8][9][10]Professor Theodore Huff, one of the leading film critics of the first half of the 20th century, stated that it was the only motion picture worthy of taking its place alongside Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, the masterpieces of Michelangelo, etc., as a separate work of art.[8]
The film was shown out of competition at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival.[11]
In 1989, Intolerancewas selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registryby the Library of Congressas being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", going in during the first year of voting.
In 2007, AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition)ranked Intoleranceat number 49 of 100 films. The film currently holds a 96% approval rating on the aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes.
Film critic David Thomsonhas written of the film's "self-destructive frenzy":
The cross-cutting, self-interrupting format is wearisome.... The sheer pretension is a roadblock, and one longs for the "Modern Story" to hold the screen.... [That story] is still very exciting in terms of its cross-cutting in the attempt to save the boy from the gallows. This episode is what Griffith did best: brilliant, modern suspense, geared up to rapidity — whenever Griffith let himself slow down he was yielding to bathos.... Anyone concerned with film history has to see Intolerance, and pass on.[12]
Influence[edit]
Intoleranceand its unorthodox editing were enormously influential, particularly among European and Soviet filmmakers. Many of the numerous assistant directors Griffith employed in making the film — Erich von Stroheim, Tod Browning, Woody Van Dyke— went on to become important and noted Hollywood directors in the subsequent years.[citation needed]It has been parodied by Buster Keatonin Three Ages(1923).[13]
A replica of an archway and elephant sculptures from the Babylon segment of the film serve as an important architectural element of the Hollywood and Highlandshopping center in Hollywood, Los Angeles(built in 2001).
Versions[edit]
Intoleranceis now in the public domain. There are currently four major versions of the film in circulation.
1.The Killiam Shows Version– This version, taken from a third-generation 16 millimeter print, contains an organ score by Gaylord Carter. Running approximately 176 minutes, this is the version that has been the most widely seen in recent years. It has been released on LaserDiscand DVD by Image Entertainment. This is the most complete version currently available on home video, if not the longest.
2.The Official Thames SilentsRestoration– In 1989, this film was given a formal restoration by film preservationists Kevin Brownlowand David Gill. This version, also running 177 minutes, was prepared by Thames Televisionfrom original 35 millimeter material, and its tones and tints restored per Griffith's original intent. It also has a digitally recorded orchestral score by Carl Davis. This version was released on VHS in the U.S. briefly around 1989–1990 by HBO Video, then went out of print. This version is under copyright by the Rohauer Collection, who worked in association with Thames on the restoration. This version of the film was given a further digital restoration by Cohen Media Group(which currently serves as keeper of the Rohauer library), and was reissued to select theatres, as well as on DVD and Blu-ray, in 2013. While not as complete as the Killiam Shows Version, this print contains footage not found on that particular print.
3.The Kino Version– Pieced together in 2002 by Kino International, this version, taken from 35 millimeter material, is transferred at a slower frame rate than the Killiam Shows and Rohauer prints, resulting in a longer running time of 197 minutes. It contains a synth orchestral score by Joseph Turrin. An alternative "happy ending" to the "Fall of Babylon" sequence, showing the Mountain Girl surviving and re-united with the Rhapsode, is included on the DVD as a supplement. This version is less complete than the Killiam Shows and Rohauer prints.
4.The Restored Digital Cinema Version– Restoration conducted by ZZ Productions in collaboration with the Danish Film Instituteand Arte Franceof the version shown on 7 April 1917 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lanein London. This version runs approximately 177 minutes and premiered 29 August 2007 at the Venice Film Festivaland on 4 October on arte.[14]
There are other budget/public domain video and Digital Video Disc versions of this film released by different companies, each with varying degrees of picture quality depending on the source that was used. A majority of these released are of poor picture quality, but even the restored 35 millimeter versions exhibit considerable film damage.
The Internet Movie Database lists the standard running time as 163 minutes, which is the running length of the DVD released by "Public Domain Flicks". The Delta DVD released in Region 1 as Intolerance: A Sun Play of the Agesand in Region 2 as Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Agesclocks in at 167 minutes. The version available for free viewing on the Internet Movie Archive is the Killiam restoration.
Cameraman Karl Brownremembered a scene with the various members of the Babylonian harem that featured full frontal nudity. He was barred from the set that day, apparently because he was so young. While there are several shots of slaves and harem girls throughout the film (which were shot by another director, without Griffith's involvement), the scene that Brown describes is not in any surviving versions.[15]
It is also known that a major segment of the Renaissance "French" story, involving the attempted assassination of the Admiral Coligny, was cut before the film's release.[15]
See also[edit]
Portal icon United States portal
Portal icon Film portal
Eyelash extensions, invented for this film
References[edit]
1.Jump up ^"Box Office Information for Intolerance". The Numbers. Retrieved April 13, 2012.
2.^ Jump up to: abcTim Dirks. "Intolerance (1916)". The Best Films of All Time – A Primer of Cinematic History.
3.Jump up ^McGee, Scott, Intolerance, Turner Classic Movies, retrieved 13 February 2013
4.Jump up ^NAACP: 100 Years of History, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), retrieved 13 February 2013
5.Jump up ^Ruth St. Denisis listed by some modern sources as the Solo Dancer in the Babylonian Story, but she denied this in an interview. However, it is generally believed St. Denis and her "Denishawn dancers" appear on the steps of the Babylon set in the great courtyard scene.
6.^ Jump up to: abCross, Mary. 100 People Who Changed 20th-Century America(2013 ed.). ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9781610690867.– Total pages: 624
7.Jump up ^William M. Drew, D.W.Griffith's Intolerance: Its Genesis and Its Vision,Jefferson, NJ, McFarland & Company (1986); (2001). ISBN 0-7864-1209-7
8.^ Jump up to: abFranklin, Joe: Classics of the Silent Screen, The Citadel Press, New York, NY, 1959
9.Jump up ^Zito, Stephen F., American Film Institute and Library of Congress, Cinema Club 9 Program Notes, Post Newsweek Stations, Washington, DC, November , 1971
10.Jump up ^Huff, Theodore, quoted in Classics of the Silent Screen, The Citadel Press, New York, NY 1959
11.Jump up ^"Festival de Cannes: Intolerance". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 2009-06-14.
12.Jump up ^Thomson, David(2008), “Have You Seen…?” A Personal introduction to 1,000 Films; New York: Knopf, pg 403.
13.Jump up ^Knopf, Robert The Theater and Cinema of Buster KeatonBy p.27
14.Jump up ^Biennale Cinema, 64th Venice Film Festival: The restored version of David Wark Griffith’s Intolerance (1916), La Biennale di Venezia, archived from the originalon 3 October 2007
15.^ Jump up to: abIntolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916) – Did You Know? – Trivia, Internet Movie Database
External links[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Intolerance.
Intoleranceat the Internet Movie Database
Intoleranceat SilentEra
Intoleranceat AllMovie
Intoleranceis available for free download at the Internet Archive[more]
Detailed plot summary and discussion of the filmat Filmsite.org
Period poster of the film at the Criterion Theatre, Bridgeton, New Jersey
Intolerance HDon YouTube
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Broken Blossoms
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
For the 1936 film, see Broken Blossoms (1936 film).
Broken Blossoms
Directed by
D. W. Griffith
Produced by
D. W. Griffith
Written by
Thomas Burke
D. W. Griffith
Starring
Lillian Gish
Richard Barthelmess
Donald Crisp
Cinematography
G.W. Bitzer
Edited by
James Smith
Distributed by
United Artists
Release dates
May 13, 1919
Running time
90 minutes
Country
United States
Language
Silent film
English intertitles
Budget
$88,000 (estimated)
Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girlis a 1919 American silentdrama film directed by D.W. Griffith. It was distributed by United Artistsand premiered on May 13, 1919. It stars Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmessand Donald Crisp, and tells the story of young girl, Lucy Burrows, who is abused by her alcoholic prizefighting father, Battling Burrows, and meets Cheng Huan, a kind-hearted Chinese man who falls in love with her. It was the first film released by United Artists. It is based on Thomas Burke's short story "The Chink and the Child" from the 1916 collection Limehouse Nights.
Contents [hide]
1Plot
2Cast
3Production and style
4Reception
5Themes
6The 'closet scene'
7References
8External links
Plot[edit]
File:Broken Blossoms.webm
Play media
Broken Blossoms
Cheng Huan (Richard Barthelmess) leaves his native Chinabecause he "dreams to spread the gentle message of Buddhato the Anglo-Saxon lands." His idealism fades as he is faced with the brutal reality of London's gritty inner-city. However, his mission is finally realized in his devotion to the "broken blossom" Lucy Burrows (Lillian Gish), the beautiful but unwanted and abused daughter of boxer Battling Burrows (Donald Crisp).
After being beaten and discarded one evening by her raging father, Lucy finds sanctuary in Cheng's home, the beautiful and exotic room above his shop. As Cheng nurses Lucy back to health, the two form a bond as two unwanted outcasts of society. All goes astray for them when Lucy's father gets wind of his daughter's whereabouts and in a drunken rage drags her back to their home to punish her. Fearing for her life, Lucy locks herself inside a closet to escape her contemptuous father.
By the time Cheng arrives to rescue Lucy, whom he so innocently adores, it is too late. Lucy's lifeless body lies on her modest bed as Battling has a drink in the other room. As Cheng gazes at Lucy's youthful face which, in spite of the circumstances, beams with innocence and even the slightest hint of a smile, Battling enters the room to make his escape. The two stand for a long while, exchanging spiteful glances, until Battling lunges for Cheng with a hatchet, and Cheng retaliates by shooting Burrows repeatedly with his handgun. After returning to his home with Lucy's body, Cheng builds a shrine to Buddha and takes his own life with a knife to the chest.
Cast[edit]
Lillian Gishas Lucy Burrows
Richard Barthelmessas Cheng Huan
Donald Crispas Battling Burrows
Arthur Howard as Burrows' manager
Edward Peil Sr.as Evil Eye
George Berangeras The Spying One
Norman Selbyas A prizefighter
Production and style[edit]
Unlike Griffith's more extravagant earlier works like The Birth of a Nationor Intolerance, Broken Blossomsis a small-scale film that uses controlled studio environments to create a more intimate effect.
Griffith was known for his willingness to collaborate with his actors and on many occasions join them in research outings.[1][2]
The visual style of Broken Blossomsemphasises the seedy Limehousestreets with their dark shadows, drug addicts and drunkards, contrasting them with the beauty of Cheng and Lucy's innocent attachment as expressed by Cheng's decorative apartment. Conversely, the Burrows' bare cell reeks of oppression and hostility. Film critic and historian Richard Schickelgoes so far as to credit this gritty realism with inspiring "the likes of Pabst, Stiller, von Sternberg, and others, [and then] re-emerging in the United States in the sound era, in the genre identified as Film Noir".[3]
Griffith was unsure of his final product and took several months to complete the editing saying "I can't look at the damn thing; it depresses me so."[4]
Reception[edit]
Lobby card for the film, showing sailors standing over two bodies, lying on the dirt street in Chinatown
Broken Blossomspremiered in May 1919, at the George M. Cohan Theatrein New York Cityas part of the D.W. Griffith Repertory Season.[5]According to Lillian Gish's autobiography, theaters were decorated with flowers, moon lanterns and beautiful Chinese brocaded draperies for the premiere. Critics and audiences were pleased with Griffith's follow-up film to his 1916 epic Intolerance.[6]Contrasting with Intolerance's grand story, set and length, Griffith charmed audiences by the delicacy with which Broken Blossomshandled such a complex subject.
" Reviewers found it 'Surprising in its simplicity'...the acting seemed nine days' wonder-no one talked of anything but Lillian's smile, Lillian turned like a tormented animal in a trap, of Barthelmess' convincing restraint. Few pictures have enjoyed greater or more lasting success d'estime."[7]
The scenes of child abusenauseated backers when Griffith gave them a preview of the film; according to Lillian Gish in interviews, a Varietyreporter invited to sit in on a second take left the room to vomit.[8]She said Griffith himself was sickened while directing her in the closet scene.[citation needed]
In 1996, Broken Blossomswas selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registryby the Library of Congressas being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Themes[edit]
Newspaper ad for the film.
Cruelty and injustice against the innocent are a recurring theme in Griffith's films and are graphically portrayed here. The introductory card says, "We may believe there are no Battling Burrows, striking the helpless with brutal whip — but do we not ourselves use the whip of unkind words and deeds? So, perhaps, Battling may even carry a message of warning."
Broken Blossomswas released during a period of strong anti-Chinese feeling in the USA, a fear known as the Yellow Peril. The phrase "yellow peril" was common in the U.S. newspapersowned by William Randolph Hearst.[9]It was also the title of a popular book by an influential U.S. religious figure, G. G. Rupert, who published The Yellow Peril; or, Orient vs. Occidentin 1911. Griffith changed Burke's original story to promote a message of tolerance. In Burke's story, the Chinese protagonist is a sordid young Shanghai drifter pressed into naval service, who frequents opium densand whorehouses; in the film, he becomes a Buddhist missionary whose initial goal is to spread the word of Buddha and peace (although he is also shown frequenting opium dens when he is depressed). Even at his lowest point, he still prevents his gambling companions from fighting.
The 'closet scene'[edit]
The most-discussed scene in Broken Blossomsis Lillian Gish's "closet" scene. Here Gish performs Lucy's horror by writhing in the claustrophobicspace like a tortured animal who knows there is no escape.[10]There is more than one anecdote about the filming of the "closet" scene, Richard Schickelwrites:
"It is heartbreaking – yet for the most part quite delicately controlled by the actress. Barthelmess reports that her hysteria was induced by Griffith's taunting of her. Gish, on her part, claims that she improvised the child's tortured movements on the spot and that when she finished the scene there was a hush on stage, broken finally by Griffith's exclamation, 'My God, why didn't you warn me you were going to do that?'".[10]
The scene is also used to demonstrate Griffith's uncanny ability to create an aural effect with only an image.[11]Gish's screams apparently attracted such a crowd outside the studio that people needed to be held back.[12]
References[edit]
1.Jump up ^Schickel, Richard. D.W. Griffith: an American Film Life.New York: Proscenium Publishers Inc, 1984. ISBN 0-87910-080-X, page 391
2.Jump up ^Williams, Martin. Griffith: First Artist of the Movies.Oxford, Oxford University Press. 1980. ISBN 0-19-502685-3, 112
3.Jump up ^Schickel, Richard. D.W. Griffith: an American Film Life.New York: Proscenium Publishers Inc, 1984. ISBN 0-87910-080-X, page 394
4.Jump up ^Schickel, Richard. D.W. Griffith: an American Film Life.New York: Proscenium Publishers Inc, 1984. ISBN 0-87910-080-X, page 395
5.Jump up ^Barry, Iris. D.W. Griffith: American Film Master.New York: Museum of Modern Art Press, 2002. ISBN 0-87070-683-7, page
6.Jump up ^O'Dell, Paul. Griffith and the Rise of Hollywood.Manchester: Castle Books, 1970. ISBN 0-498-07718-7, page 127
7.Jump up ^Barry, Iris. D.W. Griffith: American Film Master.New York: Museum of Modern Art Press, 2002. ISBN 0-87070-683-7, page 28
8.Jump up ^Affron, Charles, Lillian Gish, Her Legend, Her Life(Scribner, 2002), p. 129.
9.Jump up ^"Foreign News: Again, Yellow Peril". Time. September 11, 1933. Retrieved April 27, 2010.
10.^ Jump up to: abSchickel, Richard. D.W. Griffith: an American Film Life.New York: Proscenium Publishers Inc, 1984. ISBN 0-87910-080-X, page 392
11.Jump up ^O'Dell, Paul. Griffith and the Rise of Hollywood.Manchester: Castle Books, 1970. ISBN 0-498-07718-7, page 125
12.Jump up ^Williams, Martin. Griffith: First Artist of the Movies.Oxford, Oxford University Press. 1980. ISBN 0-19-502685-3, page 114
External links[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Broken Blossoms.
Broken Blossomsat the Internet Movie Database
Broken Blossomsat AllMovie
Broken Blossomsat the TCM Movie Database
Broken Blossomsis available for free download at the Internet Archive[more]
In-depth analysis of Broken Blossoms at filmsite.org
Film Review - Broken Blossoms, Toronto World, 07 November 1919, pg. 10.
[hide]
v·
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1914-1916
Waifs·
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Brute Force·
Home, Sweet Home·
The Escape(lost)·
The Avenging Conscience: or 'Thou Shalt Not Kill'·
The Birth of a Nation·
A Day with Governor Whitman·
Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages
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A Liberty Bond Appeal·
Hearts of the World·
The Great Love·
Lillian Gish in a Liberty Loan Appeal·
The World of Columbus·
The Greatest Thing in Life(lost)·
A Romance of Happy Valley·
The Girl Who Stayed at Home·
Broken Blossoms·
True Heart Susie·
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The Mother and the Law·
Scarlet Days·
The Greatest Question
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Remodeling Her Husband·
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The Struggle
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The Birth of a Race
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The Birth of a Race
Thebirthofarace-newspaperadvert-1922.jpg
Newspaper advertisement.
Directed by
John W. Noble
Produced by
Emmett J. Scott
Music by
Joseph Carl Breil
Cinematography
Herbert Oswald Carleton
Distributed by
Gardiner Syndicate
Release dates
December 1, 1918
Country
United States
Language
Silent film
English intertitles
The Birth of a Race is a 1918 American silent drama film directed by John W. Noble. It was made as a response to the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation, and was meant to discredit the negative stereotypes perpetuated by the film. The Birth of a Race was released following the end of World War I.
This film is preserved at the Library of Congress.[1]
Contents [hide]
1 Synopsis
2 Cast (in credits order)
3 See also
4 References
5 External links
Synopsis[edit]
Following the "Birth of the Human Race" section of the film, two brothers in a German-American family go to war in Europe, one ("George") fighting for the United States, and the other ("Oscar") fighting for Germany. George is wounded, and at the hospital defends it from a German attack, killing Oscar in the process. George is sent home to America, where he rescues his wife from a German spy.
Cast (in credits order)[edit]
Louis Dean ... The Kaiser
Harry Dumont ... Crown Prince
Carter B. Harkness ... Adam
Doris Doscher ... Eve
Charles Graham ... Noah
Ben Hendricks, Sr. ... Fritz Schmidt (as Ben Hendricks)
Alice Gale ... Frau Schmidt
John Reinhardt ... Pat O'Brien
Mary Carr ... Mrs. O'Brien (as Mary K. Carr)
Jane Grey ... Jane O'Brien
Edward Elkas ... Herr Von H.
Anna Lehr
Philip Van Loan
George LeGuere (as George Le Guere)
Warren Chandler
Anita Cortez
Edwin Boring
Dick Lee
David Wall
Belle Seacombe
See also[edit]
Portal icon United States portal
Portal icon World War I portal
Portal icon Film portal
List of American films of 1918
Race movie
References[edit]
1.Jump up ^ The Library of Congress American Silent Feature Film Survival Catalog: The Birth of a Race
New York Times movie summary
External links[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Birth of a Race.
The Birth of a Race at the Internet Movie Database
Stub icon This 1910s drama film-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Categories: 1918 films
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The Fall of a Nation (novel)
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The Fall of a Nation
The Fall of a Nation.jpg
Authors
Thomas Dixon, Jr.
Language
English
Publisher
D. Appleton & Company
Publication date
1916
The Fall of a Nation is a novel by Thomas Dixon Jr. First published by D. Appleton & Company in 1916, Dixon directed a film version released the same year.
External links[edit]
The Fall of a Nation at Google Books
Stub icon This article about a 1910s novel is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
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The Fall of a Nation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
For the novel, see The Fall of a Nation (novel).
The Fall of a Nation
The Fall of a Nation 2.jpg
Directed by
Thomas Dixon, Jr.
Written by
Thomas Dixon, Jr. (novel and screenplay)
Starring
Lorraine Huling
Percy Standing
Music by
Victor Herbert
Distributed by
V-L-S-E
Release dates
June 6, 1916
Running time
7-8 reels
Country
United States
Language
Silent
English intertitles
The Fall of a Nation (1916) is an American silent drama film directed by Thomas Dixon, Jr., and is a sequel to the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation, directed by D. W. Griffith. Dixon, Jr. attempted to cash in on the success of the controversial first film.[1] The Fall of a Nation is considered to be the first ever film sequel.[2] Based upon The Fall of a Nation, written by the director, the film is now considered lost.[3][4]
Contents [hide]
1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Production
4 Soundtrack
5 Reception and aftermath
6 See also
7 References
8 External links
Plot[edit]
The Fall of a Nation is an attack on the pacifism of William Jennings Bryan and Henry Ford[4] and a plea for American preparedness for war.[5]
America is unprepared for an attack by the "European Confederated Army", a European army headed by Germany. The army invades America and executes children and war veterans. However, America is saved by a pro-war Congressman who raises an army to defeat the invaders with the support of a suffragette. According to the Internet Movie Database, the film is split into three sections: "A nation falls", "The heel of the conqueror" and "The uprising two years later".
Film stills
The Fall of a Nation still.jpg
The Fall of a Nation still 2.jpg
Cast[edit]
Lorraine Huling - Virginia Holland
Percy Standing - Charles Waldron
Arthur Shirley - John Vassar
Flora Macdonald - Angela Benda
Paul Willis - Billy
Phil Gastrock - Thomas (as Philip Gastrock)
Clarence Geldart - General Arnold (as C.H. Geld)
Production[edit]
Some battle scenes were filmed in the same location as Birth of a Nation, at a cost of $31,000.[1]
Soundtrack[edit]
The film had a musical score produced by Victor Herbert. The Encyclopædia Britannica states that "this is probably the first original symphonic score composed for a feature film". An earlier music score was composed by Camille Saint-Saëns for the short (15-minute) film The Assassination of the Duke of Guise (1908).[6]
Reception and aftermath[edit]
Anthony Slide argues that the film was largely a commercial failure.[7] The production company, Dixon Studios, went bust in 1921, having produced only this film.[1]
See also[edit]
List of lost films
References[edit]
1.^ Jump up to: a b c Stokes, Melvyn. D.W. Griffith's the Birth of a Nation: A History of the Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time. Oxford University Press. p. 268. ISBN 978-0-19-533678-8.
2.Jump up ^ Williams, Gregory Paul. The Story of Hollywood: An Illustrated History. p. 87.
3.Jump up ^ Anthony Slide (2004). "American Racist: The Life and Films of Thomas Dixon (review)". Project MUSE. Retrieved March 2, 2013.
4.^ Jump up to: a b Fall of a Nation at AllMovie.
5.Jump up ^ "AMERICA IS INVADED AGAIN IN THE FILMS; "The Fall of a Nation"Another S... - Article Preview - The". The New York Times. 1916-06-07. Retrieved 2009-10-30.
6.Jump up ^ "The Fall of a Nation (film) - Britannica Online Encyclopedia". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2009-05-25. Retrieved 2009-10-30.
7.Jump up ^ Slide, Anthony (2004). American Racist: The Life and Films of Thomas Dixon. University Press of Kentucky. p. 102. ISBN 0-8131-2328-3.
External links[edit]
The Fall of a Nation at the Internet Movie Database
The Fall of a Nation at SilentEra
Categories: 1916 films
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Within Our Gates
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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For the 1915 Australian film, see Within Our Gates (1915 film).
Within Our Gates
Within Our Gates 1920 newspaper ad.jpg
Newspaper advertisement.
Directed by
Oscar Micheaux
Produced by
Oscar Micheaux
Written by
Oscar Micheaux
Starring
Evelyn Preer
Flo Clements
James D. Ruffin
Jack Chenault
William Smith
Charles D. Lucas
Distributed by
Micheaux Book & Film Company
Release dates
January 12, 1920
Running time
79 minutes
Country
United States
Language
Silent film
English intertitles
For a better video playback experience we recommend an HTML5 video browser.
Within Our Gates
Within Our Gates (1920) is a silent film by the director Oscar Micheaux that portrays the contemporary racial situation in the United States during the early twentieth century, the years of Jim Crow, the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, the Great Migration of blacks to cities of the North and Midwest, and the emergence of the "New Negro". It was part of a genre called race films.
The plot features an African-American woman who goes North in an effort to raise money for a rural school in the Deep South for poor Black children. Her romance with a black doctor eventually leads to revelations about her family's past and her own mixed-race, European ancestry. The film portrays racial violence under white supremacy, and the lynching of a black man. Produced, written and directed by Micheaux, it is the oldest known surviving film made by an African-American director.
Contents [hide]
1 Plot
2 Production background
3 Response
4 Aesthetics
5 Representation of racism
6 References
7 External links
Plot[edit]
The film opens with Sylvia Landry (Evelyn Preer), a young African-American woman, visiting her cousin Alma in the North. Landry is waiting for the return of Conrad from World War I as they plan to marry. Alma also loves Conrad, and would like Sylvia to marry her brother-in-law Larry, a gambler and criminal. Alma arranges for Sylvia to be caught in a compromising situation by Conrad when he returns. He leaves for Brazil, and Larry kills a man during a game of poker. Sylvia returns to the South.
Landry meets Rev. Jacobs, a minister who runs a rural school for black children called Piney Woods School. The school was overcrowded, and he cannot continue on the small amount offered to blacks for education by the state. With the school facing closure, Landry volunteers to return to the North to raise $5,000.
She has difficulty raising money, and her purse is stolen, but it is recovered by a local man, Dr. Vivian. Almost hit by a car as she saves a young child playing in the street, Landry meets the owner, Elena Warwick, a wealthy philanthropist. Learning of Sylvia's mission, she decides to give her the needed money. When her Southern friend, Mrs. Stratton, tries to discourage her, Warwick increases her donation to $50,000. This amount will save the school and Landry returns to the South.
Still from Within Our Gates, portraying the lynching of Jasper Landry (William Stark) and his wife (Mattie Edwards)
Still from the 1919 Oscar Micheaux film Within Our Gates featuring actress Evelyn Preer
Meanwhile, Dr. Vivian has fallen in love with Sylvia. He goes to Alma, who tells him about Sylvia's past: these flashback scenes are portrayed in the film. Sylvia was adopted and raised by a poor Black family, the Landrys, who managed to provide her with an education.
During her youth, the senior Landry was wrongfully accused of the murder of an unpopular but wealthy white landlord, Gridlestone. A white mob attacked the Landry family, lynching the parents and hunting down their son, who escaped after nearly being shot. The mob also lynched Efrem, a servant of Gridlestone. Sylvia escaped after being chased by Gridlestone's brother, who was close to raping her. Noticing a scar on her breast, Gridlestone's brother realized that Sylvia was his mixed-race daughter, born of his affair with a local black woman. He had paid for her education.
After hearing about her life, Dr. Vivian meets with Sylvia; he encourages her to love her country and take pride in the contributions of African Americans. He professes his love for her, and the film ends with their marriage.
Production background[edit]
Often regarded in the context of D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, which had appeared five years earlier, critics have considered Micheaux's project as a response to Griffith. The film's portrayal of lynching shows "what Blacks knew and Northern Whites refused to believe", turning the "accusation of 'primitivism'... back onto White Southern culture".[1]
Also in this period was the Chicago Race Riot of 1919, in which ethnic white mobs killed numerous blacks, and burned residential districts, leaving thousands of blacks homeless.[2] Micheaux took the film's name from a line in Griffith's film. With "Within your gates," he had suggested that people should not harm one another, lest they be harmed. The critic Ronald J. Green believes that Micheaux had seen that blacks had fought back in Chicago, and chose the title with an allusion to the risk to whites in future racial violence.[3]
Within Our Gates was the second of more than forty films directed by Micheaux. On a limited budget, Micheaux had to use borrowed costumes and props. He had no opportunity to reshoot scenes.
Lost for decades, a single print of the film, entitled La Negra (The Black Woman), was discovered in Spain in the 1970s.[4][5] A brief sequence in the middle of the film was lost. Only four of the original English intertitles survived, the rest having been replaced with Spanish intertitles when the film was distributed in Spain in the 1920s.
In 1993, the Library of Congress Motion Picture Conservation Center restored the film as closely as possible to the original.[4] Scott Simmon translated the Spanish titles back into English. He removed explanatory material added for Spanish audiences. He drew from the style and diction used by Micheaux in his novels and in the intertitles for Body and Soul, his only silent film to survive with the original intertitles.[6] The missing sequence was summarized with an intertitle frame.
Response[edit]
Within Our Gates was initially rejected by the Board of Censors in Chicago when Micheaux submitted the film in December 1919. An article in the Chicago Defender of 17 January 1920 asserted, "This is the picture that required two solid months to get by the Censor Boards." A week later the Defender reported,
"Those who reasoned with the spectacle of last July in Chicago ever before them, declared the showing pre-eminently dangerous; while those who reasoned with the knowledge of existing conditions, the injustices of the times, the lynchings and handicaps of ignorance, determined that the time is ripe to bring the lesson to the front."
Critics of the film feared that the lynching and attempted rape scenes would spark interracial violence in a city still tense from the riots of July 1919. Officials in Omaha (which also suffered a racial riot), New Orleans, and other cities objected for similar reasons when they blocked the screening of the film or demanded that those scenes be cut.
When released in January 1920 against reports of the controversy, the film garnered large audiences in Chicago. It was screened in differently cut versions. For example, an article in the Defender reported that on February 24, 1920, Within Our Gates would be shown at the States Theater in Chicago "without the cuts which were made before its initial presentation." Other evidence of cuts were extant film stills of scenes that did not appear in the surviving film copy, and viewers' descriptions that differed from the current version of the film.
It is considered an important expression of African-American life in the years immediately following World War I, when violent racist incidents occurred throughout the United States, but most frequently in the South. In 1992, Within Our Gates was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant".
Aesthetics[edit]
Early judgments that Micheaux's work lacked aesthetic finesse or artistic power now appear short-sighted. Micheaux constructed Within Our Gates to educate his audience about racism, uplift, peonage, women's rights, and the urban "new Negro" emerging after the Great Migration.
His movement in the plot between North and South was similar to that of D. W. Griffith, who used a North-South marriage plot, but also expressed the mobility of peoples during this period. Griffith dramatized a white reunion of regions that canceled the legacy of the Reconstruction Era to leave blacks out of the national picture. Micheaux's film ended with a wedding that united sophisticated African Americans from the North and South. Together, they symbolically lay claim to the whole nation, despite discrimination against blacks in the military, and the racial riots of 1919, which were based in labor and social competition.
Critics (such as Jane Gaines, Ronald Green, and Pearl Bowser and Louise Spence) celebrated the skill with which Micheaux intercut the lynching of the Landry family with the attempted rape of Sylvia by Gridlestone. This editing deconstructed the white ideology that lynching was to punish black men for alleged sexual assaults against white women. Micheaux portrayed the more frequent sexual assaults of black women by white men, alluding to the widespread historical practice of white men taking advantage of black women slaves. Other passages were edited to deconstruct white visual traditions and white ideologies.[citation needed]
He provided detailed layering of allusions to current social and political events, including the death of Theodore Roosevelt, the contributions of African-American soldiers to the war, and debates in the US Senate over Jim Crow laws and labor peonage in the South.[citation needed] The film can only be evaluated in its fragmentary form of the only surviving print.
Representation of racism[edit]
The film portrayed several aspects of contemporary African-American society. Heroes and heroines included Sylvia Landry and Reverend Jacobs, criminals such as Larry, and "lackeys" such as a minister whom Mrs. Stafford supported, who encouraged African Americans to reject suffrage. The critic Ronald J. Green suggests that Bernice Ladd as Mrs. Stafford, represents a "Lillian Gish figure", referring to her role in The Birth of a Nation. She was racist and anti-feminist.[7] Green notes that Micheaux intended the links between the films, and cast Ladd in part for her physical resemblance to Gish.[8][9]
Efrem, a servant to Gridlestone, denounced Mr. Landry as the murderer, although he was not a witness to the crime. Overturning the relationship which Efrem believed he had with whites, a mob lynched him when it failed to find the Landrys.
References[edit]
1.Jump up ^ Mellencamp, Patricia. A Fine Romance--Five Ages of Film Feminism. 1995, pp. 230-1
2.Jump up ^ Green, Ronald J. Straight Lick. 2000, p. 24
3.Jump up ^ Green (2000), Straight Lick, p. 1
4.^ Jump up to: a b Holloway, David and Beck, John. American Visual Cultures. 2005, p. 60
5.Jump up ^ Mellencamp, Patricia. A Fine Romance--Five Ages of Film Feminism. 1995, pp. 229-30
6.Jump up ^ Notes included with The Library of Congress Video Collection (Washington, DC: 1993)
7.Jump up ^ Green (2000), Straight Lick, pp. 9-10
8.Jump up ^ Green, Ronald J. With a Crooked Stick. 2004, p. 47
9.Jump up ^ Robinson, Cedric J. Forgeries of Memory and Meaning. 2007, p. 252-3
External links[edit]
Within Our Gates at the Internet Movie Database
Within Our Gates is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
Within Our Gates at AllMovie
Stace England & The Salt Kings, Original song, "Within Our Gates" With Film Clips's channel on YouTube
"Within Our Gates (1920) - Oscar Micheaux Silent Film" on YouTube.
[hide]
v ·
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e
Films directed by Oscar Micheaux
The Homesteader ·
Within Our Gates ·
The Brute ·
The Symbol of the Unconquered ·
The Gunsaulus Mystery ·
The Dungeon ·
The Hypocrite ·
Uncle Jasper's Will ·
The Virgin of the Seminole ·
Deceit ·
Birthright ·
A Son of Satan ·
Body and Soul ·
Marcus Garland ·
The Conjure Woman ·
The Devil's Disciple ·
The Spider's Web ·
The Millionaire ·
The Broken Violin ·
The House Behind the Cedars ·
Thirty Years Later ·
When Men Betray ·
Wages of Sin ·
Easy Street ·
A Daughter of the Congo ·
Darktown Revue ·
The Exile ·
Veiled Aristocrats ·
Ten Minutes to Live ·
Black Magic ·
The Girl from Chicago ·
Phantom of Kenwood ·
Harlem After Midnight ·
Murder in Harlem ·
Temptation ·
Underworld ·
God's Step Children ·
Swing! ·
Lying Lips ·
Birthright ·
The Notorious Elinor Lee ·
The Betrayal
Categories: 1920 films
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The Leopard's Spots
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This article is about a novel. For general leopard patterning, see Leopard (pattern).
The Leopard's Spots: A Romance of the White Man's Burden - 1865-1900
The Leopard's Spots.jpg
First edition cover.
Author
Thomas Dixon
Illustrator
C. D. Williams
Country
United States
Language
English
Genre
Novel
Publisher
Doubleday, Page & Co.
Publication date
1902
Media type
ISBN
NA
OCLC
12852953
The Leopard's Spots is the first novel of Thomas Dixon's Ku Klux Klan trilogy that included The Clansman and The Traitor.[1] In the novel Dixon offers an account of Reconstruction in which he portrays the villains as a former slave driver, Northern carpetbaggers and emancipated slaves; and heroes as members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Contents [hide]
1 Characters
2 References
3 Further reading
4 External links
Characters[edit]
Charles Gaston - A man who dreams of making it to the Governor's Mansion
Sallie Worth - A daughter of the old-fashioned South
Gen. Daniel Worth - Sallie Worth's father
Mrs. Worth - Sallie's mother
The Rev. John Durham - A preacher who threw his life away
Tom Camp - A Confederate soldier
Flora - Tom's daughter
Simon Legree - Ex-slave driver and Reconstruction leader
Allan Mcleod - A scalawag (Union sympathizer)
Everett Lowell - Member of Congress from Boston
Helen Lowell - Everett's daughter
Major Stuart Dameron - Head of the Ku Klux Klan
Hose Norman - poor white man
Hon. Tim Shelby - Political Boss
George Harris, Jr - An educated Negro Leonidas
References[edit]
1.Jump up ^ Andrew Leitner, "Thomas Dixon, Jr.: Conflicts in History and Literature", Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina, accessed Jun 12, 2008
Further reading[edit]
Bloomfield, Maxwell. "Dixon's "The Leopard's Spots": A Study in Popular Racism," American Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Autumn, 1964), pp. 387–401 in JSTOR
External links[edit]
Full text of The Leopard's Spots, Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina
Stub icon This article about a 1900s novel is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Categories: 1902 novels
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The Clansman
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The Clansman
The Clansman 1st Ed.jpg
Authors
Thomas Dixon, Jr.
Language
English
Publication date
1905
The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan is a novel published in 1905. It was the second work in the Ku Klux Klan trilogy by Thomas F. Dixon, Jr. that included The Leopard's Spots and The Traitor. It was influential in providing the ideology that helped support the revival of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). The novel was immediately adapted by its author as a play entitled The Clansman (1905) and by D. W. Griffith as the groundbreaking 1915 silent movie The Birth of a Nation.
The play particularly inspired the second half of The Birth of a Nation, as it was concerned with the KKK and Reconstruction rather than the American Civil War. According to Professor Russell Merritt, key differences between the play and film are said to include that Dixon was more sympathetic to Southerners' pursuing education and modern professions, whereas Griffith stressed ownership of plantations.[1]
Dixon wrote The Clansman as a message to Northerners to maintain racial segregation, as the work claimed that blacks when free would turn savage and violent, committing crimes such as murder, rape and robbery far out of proportion to their percentage of the population. He claimed to write for 18,000,000 southerners who supported his beliefs, though that many never joined the Klan.[2] Dixon portrays the speaker of the house, Austin Stoneman, as a negro-loving legislator mad with power and eaten up with hate. His goal is to punish the Southern whites for their revolution against an oppressive government by turning the former slaves against the White Southerners and use the iron fist of the Union occupation troops to make them the new masters. The Klan's job is to protect the White Southerners from the carpetbaggers and their allies, Black and White.
In addition to criticism that The Clansman would stir up sentiment in the South, Dixon's argument, that the Klan had saved the South from negro rule was ridiculed by some as absurd.[3]
Contents [hide]
1 Characters
2 Historical plot
3 Reception
4 Rebirth of the Klan
5 References
6 External links
Characters[edit]
Austin Stoneman – Northern political leader who advocates and implements Reconstruction in the conquered Southern States. Introduces bill to impeach President Andrew Johnson.
Elsie Stoneman – daughter of the above. Defies father's wishes by falling in love with young Southern patriot Ben Cameron.
Phil Stoneman – son and brother of the above. Falls in love with Southerner Margaret Cameron.
Lydia Brown – Austin Stoneman's mulatto housekeeper
Silas Lynch – mulatto assistant to Austin Stoneman. Aids him in forcing Reconstruction on the defiant Southerners.
Marion Lenoir – Fifteen-year-old white girl who was Ben Cameron's childhood sweetheart. After being brutally raped by Gus, she commits suicide by jumping off a cliff.
Jeannie Lenoir – mother of the above. Joins her daughter in fatal cliff leap.
Gus – a former slave of the Camerons. Rapes Marion and is then captured and executed by the Ku Klux Klan, under the supervision of the "Grand Dragon" Ben Cameron.
Dr Richard Cameron – a Southern doctor, falsely charged with complicity in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
Mrs Cameron – wife of Dr Richard Cameron.
Ben Cameron – son of the above and the hero of the novel. Falls in love with Northerner Elsie Stoneman. Fought for the South in the Civil War and later joins the Ku Klux Klan in order to resist Northern occupation forces.
Margaret Cameron – sister of the above.
Mammy
Jake
President Abraham Lincoln- Lincoln is portrayed as a sympathetic character, one who sought to restore normalcy by shipping former slaves back to Africa.
President Andrew Johnson – Lincoln's successor. Impeached in Congress for opposing Reconstruction.
Historical plot[edit]
In The Clansman, Reconstruction was an attempt by Augustus Stoneman, a thinly veiled reference to Thaddeus Stevens, to ensure that the Republican Party would stay in power by securing the southern black vote. His hatred for President Johnson stems from Johnson's refusal to disenfranchise whites. Stoneman's anger towards former slave holders is intensified after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, where he vows revenge on the South. His programs strip away the property owned by whites, in turn giving them to former slaves. Men claiming to represent the government confiscate the material wealth of the South, destroying plantation owning families. Finally, the former slaves are taught that they are superior to their former owners and should rise up against them. These injustices are the impetuses for the creation of the Klan.
Reception[edit]
The publication of The Clansman caused significant uproar not only in the North, but throughout the South. In Montgomery, Alabama and Macon, Georgia the play was banned from being performed.[4] Thomas Dixon was denounced for renewing old conflicts and glorifying what many thought was an unfortunate part of American history. In an effort to prevent a showing in Washington, D.C a group of pastors appealed to President Roosevelt to intercede on their behalf.[5] These protesters certainly were correct in thinking that the book, play, and subsequent movie would stir up old sentiments. In fact, the Klan reached its greatest heights in the 1920s reaching six million members nationwide.
The play, despite these protests, was extremely popular in the South. It drew record breaking audiences in Columbia, South Carolina and opened with a huge premier when performed in Norfolk, Virginia.[6][7] In fact, the vast majority of news stories about The Clansman have to do with the play, not the novel.
When offered membership in the KKK, Dixon reportedly turned it down because, he claimed, he did not agree with the Klan's methods.[8] The Klokard of the Klan, Rev. Dr. Oscar Haywood, at one point challenged Dixon to a debate over the nature of the Ku Klux Klan.[9]
Despite Dixon's reported claims that he rejected violence except in self-defense, in the book previous to The Clansman in the trilogy, The Leopard's Spots, Dixon's Klan dealt thusly with a black man who had asked a white woman to kiss him:[10]
When the sun rose next morning the lifeless body of Tim Shelby was dangling from a rope tied to the iron rail of the balcony of the court house. His neck was broken and his body was hanging low--scarcely three feet from the ground. His thick lips had been split with a sharp knife and from his teeth hung this placard: "The answer of the Anglo-Saxon race to Negro lips that dare pollute with words the womanhood of the South. K. K. K."
—Thomas Dixon, The Leopard's Spots, Chapter XIX, "The Rally of the Clansmen", p. 150
Dixon's novel is often contraposed with Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.[11] The character of Gus in The Clansman, who is shown as the worst kind of former slave, going as far as to rape a white woman, is the opposite of the benevolent Uncle Tom, who is portrayed as angelic. The books are also similar for the reactions they stirred up among their readers. Uncle Tom's Cabin was detested and banned throughout the South, while The Clansman was ranted against in Northern papers. Also like Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Clansman reached its greatest audience not through its book form, but through the play and movie forms. The book previous to the The Clansman in Dixon's trilogy, The Leopard's Spots, actually featured Simon Legree, a character Dixon appropriated from Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Rebirth of the Klan[edit]
Thomas Dixon's novel did not have the immediate effect of causing the recreation of the Ku Klux Klan. Neither did the subsequent play. Rather, several white supremacist groups stood in place of the Klan between the 1870s and 1915. The release of the movie The Birth of a Nation finally let Dixon's work reach a large enough audience to start the refounding of the Klan. This second Klan quickly outgrew the first, drawing significant membership from Northern states in part because of the success of the novel, play, and movie. The social impact of the book was certainly enormous. Though Anglo-centric groups had existed previously, they were mostly limited to Southern states and had small membership. The book and subsequent play and movie glorified Anglo-Saxon dominance through the power held by the Klan. This appealed to Anglo-Saxons everywhere, not merely in the South. In the North the Klan not only advocated suppression of African Americans, but also Jews, Catholics, and other immigrants. Through this nativist sentiment the Klan had its greatest power in the state of Indiana. There membership reached 30% of the white adult male population.[12] The total Klan membership is thought to have reached nearly six million in 1924, less than twenty years after the publication of The Clansman.[13]
One of the images most commonly associated with the Klan, that of a burning Latin cross, was actually taken from The Clansman, but was not used by the original clan.
References[edit]
1.Jump up ^ Russell Merritt, "Dixon, Griffith, and the Southern Legend." Cinema Journal, Vol. 12, No. 1. (Autumn, 1972)
2.Jump up ^ Dixon, Thomas (February 25, 1905). ""THE CLANSMAN.": Its Author, Thomas Dixon, Jr., Replies with Spirit and Good Humor to Some of His Critics". The New York Times Book Review. Retrieved 4/18/12. Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
3.Jump up ^ "THE CLANSMAN DENOUNCED.: South Carolina Editor Denies Charges Made by Thomas Dixon, Jr.". The New York Times. 1/2/1906. Retrieved 4/18/12. Check date values in: |date=, |accessdate= (help)
4.Jump up ^ "Suppress "the Clansman!"". The Washington Post. September 26, 1906. Retrieved February 22, 2012.
5.Jump up ^ "WOULD STOP "THE CLANSMAN.": Pastors Appeal to President to Prevent the Performance.". The Washington Post. 10/6/06. Retrieved 4/18/12. Check date values in: |date=, |accessdate= (help)
6.Jump up ^ "HISSING OF "THE CLANSMAN.": Majority of People of Columbia, S.C., Commend the Play.". The Washington Post. August 21, 1905. Retrieved 4/18/12. Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
7.Jump up ^ "PREMIER OF CLANSMAN.: Thomas Dixon's Dramatic Answer to "Uncle Tom's Cabin" Scores Success". September 23, 1905. Retrieved 4/18/12. Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
8.Jump up ^ "KLAN IS DENOUNCED BY 'THE CLANSMAN': Thomas Dixon Blames It for Riots and Bloodshed and Demands It Be Throttled". The New York Times. January 23, 1923. Retrieved 4/18/12. Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
9.Jump up ^ "KLOKARD HAYWOOD HERE TO AID KU KLUX: Issues Challenge to Author of 'The Clansman' to Meet Him in Public Debate. PLANS PUBLIC ADDRESSES Pastor Calls Men Rouge Outrages a Plot -- Says Disclosures Would Shake the World". The New York Times. 2/5/23. Retrieved 4/18/12. Check date values in: |date=, |accessdate= (help)
10.Jump up ^ Dixon, Thomas (1902 (Web version) 1998). "The Leopard's Spots". Documenting the American South. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Retrieved July 19, 2013. Check date values in: |date= (help)
11.Jump up ^ "Tom Dixon and His Clansman". The Washington Post. November 9, 1905. Retrieved February 22, 2012.
12.Jump up ^ "Indiana History Chapter Seven". Northern Indiana Center for History. Archived from the original on April 11, 2008. Retrieved October 7, 2008.
13.Jump up ^ "The Various Shady Lives of The Ku Klux Klan". Time. April 9, 1965. Retrieved December 24, 2009.
External links[edit]
Full Text with Illustrations
Full book at Google Book search
Categories: 1905 novels
Books about the Ku Klux Klan
White supremacy in the United States
American novels adapted into films
American political novels
Novels about terrorism
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The Birth of a Nation
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For the 1982 film of the same name, see Birth of a Nation (1982 film).
The Birth of a Nation
Birth of a Nation theatrical poster.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by
D. W. Griffith
Produced by
D. W. Griffith
Harry Aitken[1]
Screenplay by
D. W. Griffith
Frank E. Woods
Based on
The Clansman
by T. F. Dixon, Jr.
Starring
Lillian Gish
Mae Marsh
Henry B. Walthall
Miriam Cooper
Ralph Lewis
George Siegmann
Music by
Joseph Carl Breil
Cinematography
G.W. Bitzer
Edited by
D. W. Griffith
Production
company
David W. Griffith Corp.
Distributed by
Epoch Producing Co.
Release dates
February 8, 1915
Running time
133 minutes[2] (Original release)
190 minutes (at 16 frame/s)
Country
United States
Language
Silent film
English intertitles
Budget
$112,000[3]
Box office
unknown; estimated $11,000,000[4]–$60,000,000[5]
File:Birth of a Nation (1915).webm
Play media
The Birth of a Nation
The Birth of a Nation (originally called The Clansman) is a 1915 American silent drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and based on the novel and play The Clansman, both by Thomas Dixon, Jr. Griffith co-wrote the screenplay (with Frank E. Woods), and co-produced the film (with Harry Aitken). It was released on February 8, 1915. The film was originally presented in two parts, separated by an intermission. It was the first 12-reel film in America.[6]
The film chronicles the relationship of two families in Civil War and Reconstruction-US era: the pro-Union Northern Stonemans and the pro-Confederacy Southern Camerons over the course of several years. The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth is dramatized.
The film was a commercial success, but was highly controversial owing to its portrayal of African-American men (played by white actors in blackface) as unintelligent and sexually aggressive towards white women, and the portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan (whose original founding is dramatized) as a heroic force.[7][8] There were widespread African-American protests against The Birth of a Nation, such as in Boston, while thousands of white Bostonians flocked to see the film.[9] The NAACP spearheaded an unsuccessful campaign to ban the film.[9] Griffith's indignation at efforts to censor or ban the film motivated him to produce Intolerance the following year.[10]
The film is also credited as one of the events that inspired the formation of the "second era" Ku Klux Klan at Stone Mountain, Georgia, in the same year. The Birth of a Nation was used as a recruiting tool for the KKK.[11] Under Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, it was the first motion picture to be screened in the White House.[12][13]
Despite the film's controversial content, Griffith's innovative film techniques make it one of the most influential films in the commercial film industry, and it is often ranked as one of the greatest American films of all time.[14][15]
Contents [hide]
1 Plot 1.1 Part 1: Civil War of United States
1.2 Part 2: Reconstruction
2 Cast
3 Production 3.1 Score
4 Responses 4.1 Box office performance
5 Ideology and accuracy
6 Significance
7 Sequel
8 New opening titles on re-release
9 Home media
10 See also
11 References
12 External links
Plot[edit]
Part 1: Civil War of United States[edit]
The film follows two juxtaposed families: the Northern Stonemans, consisting of the abolitionist Congressman Austin Stoneman, based on the Reconstruction-era Congressman Thaddeus Stevens,[16][17] his two sons, and his daughter Elsie; and the Southern Camerons, a family including two daughters, Margaret and Flora, and three sons, most notably Ben.
The Stoneman brothers visit the Camerons at their South Carolina estate, representing the Old South. The elder of the two Stoneman sons, Phil, falls in love with Margaret Cameron, while Ben Cameron idolizes a picture of Elsie Stoneman. When the Civil War begins, all the young men join their respective armies.
A black militia (with a white leader) ransacks the Cameron house. The Cameron women are rescued when Confederate soldiers rout the militia. Meanwhile, the younger Stoneman and two of the Cameron brothers are killed in the war. Ben Cameron is wounded after a heroic charge at the Siege of Petersburg, in which he gains the nickname "the Little Colonel". He is taken to a Northern hospital where he meets Elsie Stoneman, who is working there as a nurse. While recovering, Cameron is told that he will be hanged for being a guerrilla. Elsie takes Cameron's mother, who has traveled to Washington to tend her son, to see Abraham Lincoln. Mrs. Cameron persuades Lincoln to issue a pardon.
When Lincoln is assassinated at Ford's Theater, his conciliatory postwar policy expires with him. Austin Stoneman and other radical congressmen are determined to punish the South, using harsh measures that Griffith depicts as typical of the Reconstruction era.[18]
Part 2: Reconstruction[edit]
Battle scene from The Birth of a Nation
Stoneman and his protégé Silas Lynch, a mulatto with psychopathic characteristics,[19] go to South Carolina in 1871 to observe the situation first hand. Black soldiers parade through the streets. During the election, whites are turned away while blacks stuff the ballot boxes. Lynch is elected Lieutenant Governor. The newly elected mostly-black legislature is shown at their desks, with one member taking off his shoe and putting his feet up, and others drinking liquor and feasting. They pass laws requiring white civilians to salute black officers and allowing mixed-race marriages.
Meanwhile, inspired by observing white children pretending to be ghosts to scare off black children, Ben fights back by forming the Ku Klux Klan. As a result, Elsie breaks off their relationship out of loyalty to her father. Gus, a freedman and soldier who is now a Captain, follows Flora Cameron as she goes alone to fetch water. He tells her he is looking to get married. Frightened, she flees into the forest, pursued by Gus. Trapped on a precipice, Flora warns Gus she will jump if he comes any closer. When he does, she leaps to her death. Ben finds his sister, having run through the forest looking for her and seen her jump, and holds her as she lies dying. The Klan hunts Gus down, tries him, and finds him guilty. The clansmen leave his corpse on Lynch's doorstep.
Lynch orders a crackdown on the Klan. Dr. Cameron, Ben's father, is arrested for having Ben's Klan costume, a crime punishable by death. Ben and their faithful servants rescue him, and the Camerons flee. When their wagon breaks down, they make their way to a small hut, home to two former Union soldiers, who agree to hide them. As an intertitle states, "The former enemies of North and South are united again in defense of their Aryan birthright."
Austin Stoneman leaves to avoid being connected with Lynch's crackdown. Elsie, learning of Dr. Cameron's arrest, goes to Lynch to plead for his release. Lynch tries to force Elsie to marry him and she finally faints. Stoneman returns, causing Elsie to be placed in another room, and is happy at first when Lynch tells him he wants to marry a white woman, but is angered when Lynch tells him which one. Disguised Klansmen spies discover Elsie's plight when she breaks a window and cries for help and leave to get help. She falls unconscious again, and revives gagged and being bound. The Klan, gathered together at full strength and with Ben leading them, rides in to regain control of the town. When news reaches Ben about Elsie, he and others go to her rescue. Elsie frees her mouth and screams for help. Lynch is captured. Victorious, the clansmen celebrate in the streets. Meanwhile, Lynch's militia surrounds and attacks the hut where the Camerons are hiding. The clansmen, with Ben at their head, race to save them just in time.
The next election day, blacks find a line of mounted and armed Klansmen just outside their homes, and are intimidated into not voting. The film concludes with a double honeymoon of Phil Stoneman with Margaret Cameron and Ben Cameron with Elsie Stoneman. The masses are shown oppressed by a giant warlike figure who gradually fades away. The scene shifts to another group finding peace under the image of Christ. The penultimate title rhetorically asks: "Dare we dream of a golden day when the bestial War shall rule no more? But instead-the gentle Prince in the Hall of Brotherly Love in the City of Peace."
Cast[edit]
Lillian Gish as Elsie Stoneman
Mae Marsh as Flora Cameron
Henry B. Walthall as Colonel Ben Cameron
Miriam Cooper as Margaret Cameron
Ralph Lewis as Austin Stoneman
George Siegmann as Silas Lynch
William De Vaull as Jake
Walter Long as Gus
Robert Harron as Tod Stoneman
Wallace Reid as Jeff the blacksmith
Joseph Henabery as Abraham Lincoln
Elmer Clifton as Phil Stoneman
Josephine Crowell as Mrs. Cameron
Spottiswoode Aitken as Dr. Cameron
George Beranger as Wade Cameron
Maxfield Stanley as Duke Cameron
Jennie Lee as Mammy
Donald Crisp as General Ulysses S. Grant
Howard Gaye as General Robert E. Lee
Uncredited:
Mary Alden as Lydia Brown
Monte Blue
Bobby Burns as Klan Leader
David Butler as Union soldier / Confederate soldier
Peggy Cartwright as Young girl
John Ford as Klansman
Gibson Gowland
Sam De Grasse as Senator Charles Sumner
Olga Grey as Laura Keene
Russell Hicks
Elmo Lincoln as Blacksmith
Eugene Pallette as Union soldier
Vester Pegg
Alma Rubens
Charles Stevens as Volunteer
Madame Sul-Te-Wan as Black woman
Raoul Walsh as John Wilkes Booth
Jules White
Violet Wilkey as young Flora
Tom Wilson as Stoneman's servant
Mary Wynn
Production[edit]
Hooded Klansmen catch Gus, a black man described in the film as "a renegade, a product of the vicious doctrines spread by the carpetbaggers." Gus was portrayed in blackface by white actor Walter Long.
The Birth of a Nation began filming in 1914 and pioneered such camera techniques as the use of panoramic long shots, the iris effects, still-shots, night photography, panning camera shots, and a carefully staged battle sequence with hundreds of extras made to look like thousands. It also contains many new artistic techniques, such as color tinting for dramatic purposes, building up the plot to an exciting climax, dramatizing history alongside fiction, and featuring its own musical score written for an orchestra.[citation needed]
When the film was released, it shattered both box office and film-length records, running three hours and ten minutes. In 1998, it was voted one of the "Top 100 American Films" (#44) by the American Film Institute.
The film was based on Thomas Dixon, Jr.'s novels The Clansman and The Leopard's Spots. It was originally to have been shot in Kinemacolor but D. W. Griffith took over the Hollywood studio of Kinemacolor and Kinemacolor's plans to film Dixon's novel. Griffith, whose father served as a colonel in the Confederate Army, agreed to pay Thomas Dixon $10,000 (equal to $235,449 today) for the rights to his play The Clansman. Since he ran out of money and could afford only $2,500 of the original option, Griffith offered Dixon 25 percent interest in the picture. Dixon reluctantly agreed, and the unprecedented success of the film made him rich. Dixon's proceeds were the largest sum any author had received for a motion picture story and amounted to several million dollars.[citation needed]
Griffith's budget started at US$40,000 (equal to $941,794 today), but the film finally cost $112,000[3] (the equivalent of $2.41 million in 2010).[20] As a result, Griffith had to seek new sources of capital for his film. A ticket to the film cost a record $2 (equal to $46.63 today).[20]
West Point engineers provided technical advice on the Civil War battle scenes. They provided Griffith with the artillery used in the film.[21]
The film premiered on February 8, 1915, at Clune's Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles. At its premiere the film was entitled The Clansman, but the title was later changed to The Birth of a Nation to reflect Griffith's belief that the United States emerged from the American Civil War and Reconstruction as a unified nation.[22]
The film is in the public domain.[23]
Score[edit]
Sheet music for "The Perfect Song", one of the themes Breil composed for the film.
Although the film is regarded as a landmark in terms of its dramatic and visual accomplishments, it was arguably equally revolutionary for its use of music.[24] Though film was still silent at the time, it was common practice to distribute musical cue sheets, or less commonly, full scores (usually for piano accompaniment) along with each print of a film.[25]
For The Birth of a Nation, composer Joseph Carl Breil created a three-hour long musical score that combined all three types of music in use at the time: adaptations of existing works by classical composers, new arrangements of well-known melodies, and original composed music.[24] Though it had been specifically composed for the film, Breil's score was not used for the Los Angeles première of the film at Clune's Auditorium, but music compiled by the Carli Elinor was performed instead. Breil's score was not used until the film debuted in New York at the Liberty Theatre.[26][27]
The adapted classical music used in the film contained, among others, passages from Der Freischütz by Carl Maria von Weber, Leichte Kavallerie by Franz von Suppé, Symphony No. 6 by Ludwig van Beethoven, and Ride of the Valkyries by Richard Wagner, the latter used as a leitmotif during the ride of the KKK.[24] Breil also arranged several traditional and popular tunes that would have been recognizable to audiences at the time, including many Southern melodies; among these songs were "Maryland, My Maryland", "Dixie", "Old Folks at Home", "The Star-Spangled Banner", "America the Beautiful", "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", "Auld Lang Syne", and "Where Did You Get That Hat?".[24][28]
In his original compositions for the film, Breil wrote numerous leitmotifs to accompany the appearance of specific characters. 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 even used as the theme song for the popular sitcom Amos 'n' Andy.[26][27]
Responses[edit]
George Beranger in an actual Confederate uniform; the film used Confederate Army surplus uniforms since the Civil War was still recent enough in 1915 for them to be readily available.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1909, protested premieres of the film in numerous cities. According to the historian David Copeland, "by the time of the movie's March 3 [1915] premiere in New York City, its subject matter had embroiled the film in charges of racism, protests, and calls for censorship, which began after the Los Angeles branch of the National Association for Colored People requested the city's film board ban the movie. Since film boards were comprised almost entirely of whites, few review boards initially banned Griffith's picture".[29] The NAACP also conducted a public education campaign, publishing articles protesting the film's fabrications and inaccuracies, organizing petitions against it, and conducting education on the facts of the war and Reconstruction.[30]
When the film was shown, riots broke out in Boston, Philadelphia and other major cities. The film's inflammatory character was a catalyst for gangs of whites to attack blacks. In Lafayette, Indiana, after seeing the film, a white man murdered a black teenager.[31] The mayor of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who banned the film in 1915 after meeting with a delegation of black citizens, was the first of twelve mayors who banned or censored the film out of concern that its screening would promote race prejudice.[32] The cities of Chicago, Denver, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh and St. Louis refused to allow the film to open.
Thomas Dixon, Jr., author of the source play The Clansman, was a former classmate of Woodrow Wilson at Johns Hopkins University. Dixon arranged a screening at the White House, for then-President Wilson, members of his cabinet, and their families. Wilson was reported to have said about the film, "It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true". In Wilson: The New Freedom, the historian Arthur Link quotes Wilson's aide, Joseph Tumulty, who denied Wilson said this and also claims that "the President was entirely unaware of the nature of the play before it was presented and at no time has expressed his approbation of it."[33] Historians believe the quote attributed to Wilson originated with Dixon, who was relentless in publicizing the film. It has been repeated so often in print that it has taken on a life of its own. Dixon went so far as to promote the film as "Federally endorsed". After controversy over the film had grown, Wilson wrote that he disapproved of the "unfortunate production."[34]
Griffith, indignant at the film's negative critical reception, wrote letters to newspapers, and published a pamphlet in which he accused his critics of censoring unpopular opinions.[35] He conceived his next film, Intolerance (1916), as a response to those who had censored his film.[35]
Soon after World War I, in 1918, Emmett J. Scott helped produce and John W. Noble directed The Birth of a Race, hoping to capitalize on the success of Griffith's film by presenting a film set during the war. It featured a German-American family divided by the war, with sons fighting on either side, and the one loyal to the United States surviving to be part of the victory.[36]
In 1919, the director/producer/writer Oscar Micheaux released Within Our Gates, a response from the African-American community. Notably, he reversed a key scene of Griffith's film by depicting a white man assaulting a black woman.
The film was remixed as Rebirth of a Nation, a "live" cinema experience by DJ Spooky at Lincoln Center, and has toured at many venues around the world including The Acropolis as a live cinema "remix". The remix version was also presented at Paula Cooper Gallery in New York[37]
Box office performance[edit]
The box office gross of The Birth of a Nation is not known, and was long subject to exaggeration.[38] In 1940, Time magazine reported the film's cumulative gross as more than $15 million.[39] The Encyclopedia of American Race Riots says The Birth of a Nation earned "more than $10 million at the box office in 1915. By 1949, it had earned $50 million."[40] In 1977, Variety revised its estimate of the producer's gross from $50 million down to $5 million.[5] The film historian Richard Schickel says the film grossed slightly less than that—about $4.8 million—for Epoch, the production company, by the end of 1917, but the producer's gross is not the same as the box office gross.[5] In the biggest cities, Epoch negotiated with individual theater owners for a percentage of the box office; elsewhere the producer sold all rights in a particular state to a single distributor (an arrangement known as "state's rights" distribution).[41] Schickel says that under the state's rights contracts, Epoch typically received about 10% of the box office gross—which theater owners often underreported—and concludes that "Birth certainly generated more than $60 million in box-office business in its first run".[5]
Ideology and accuracy[edit]
Woodrow Wilson's History of the American People is quoted in The Birth of a Nation.
The film is controversial due to its interpretation of history. University of Houston historian Steven Mintz summarizes its message as follows: Reconstruction was a disaster, blacks could never be integrated into white society as equals, and the violent actions of the Ku Klux Klan were justified to reestablish honest government.[42] The film suggested that the Ku Klux Klan restored order to the post-war South, which was depicted as endangered by abolitionists, freedmen, and carpetbagging Republican politicians from the North. This reflects the so-called Dunning School of historiography.[43] The film also portrays beloved President Abraham Lincoln as friend of the Confederacy and hero to the racist White South. He is referred to as "the Great Heart".
Some historians, such as E. Merton Coulter in his The South Under Reconstruction (1947), maintained the Dunning School view after World War II. Today, the Dunning School position is largely seen as a product of anti-black racism of the early 20th century, by which many Americans held that black Americans were unequal as citizens.
Veteran film reviewer Roger Ebert wrote,
... stung by criticisms that the second half of his masterpiece was racist in its glorification of the Ku Klux Klan and its brutal images of blacks, Griffith tried to make amends in Intolerance (1916), which criticized prejudice. And in Broken Blossoms he told perhaps the first interracial love story in the movies—even though, to be sure, it's an idealized love with no touching.[44]
Despite some similarities between the Congressman Stoneman character and Rep. Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, Rep. Stevens did not have the family members described and did not move to South Carolina during Reconstruction. He died in Washington, DC in 1868. However, Stevens was widely rumored to keep a biracial mistress-housekeeper, who was generously provided for in his will.[45]
The depictions of mass Klan paramilitary actions do not seem to have historical equivalents, although there were incidents in 1871 where Klan groups traveled from other areas in fairly large numbers to aid localities in disarming local companies of the all-black portion of the state militia under various justifications, prior to the eventual Federal troop intervention, and the organized Klan's continued activities as small groups of "night riders".[46]
The civil rights movement and other social movements created a new generation of historians, such as scholar Eric Foner, who led a reassessment of Reconstruction. Building on W.E.B. DuBois' work but also adding new sources, they focused on achievements of the African-American and white Republican coalitions, such as establishment of universal public education and charitable institutions in the South and extension of suffrage to black men. In response, the Southern-dominated Democratic Party and its affiliated white militias used extensive terrorism, intimidation and outright assassinations to suppress African-American leaders and voting in the 1870s and to regain power.[47]
Significance[edit]
Raoul Walsh as John Wilkes Booth
Released in 1915, The Birth of a Nation has been credited as groundbreaking among its contemporaries for its innovative application of the medium of film. According to the film historian Kevin Brownlow, the film was "astounding in its time" and initiated "so many advances in film-making technique that it was rendered obsolete within a few years."[48] The content of the work, however, has received widespread criticism for its blatantly racist and fantastical depictions of scenes that are presented onscreen as if in documentary form. Film critic Roger Ebert writes, "Certainly The Birth of a Nation (1915) presents a challenge for modern audiences. Unaccustomed to silent films and uninterested in film history, they find it quaint and not to their taste. Those evolved enough to understand what they are looking at find the early and wartime scenes brilliant, but cringe during the postwar and Reconstruction scenes, which are racist in the ham-handed way of an old minstrel show or a vile comic pamphlet."[49]
The film held the mantle of the highest grossing film until it was overtaken by Gone with the Wind.[50]
In 1992, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. Despite its controversial story, the film has been praised by film critics such as Roger Ebert, who said: "The Birth of a Nation is not a bad film because it argues for evil. Like Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, it is a great film that argues for evil. To understand how it does so is to learn a great deal about film, and even something about evil."[49] The website Rotten Tomatoes, which compiles reviews from various sources, indicates the film has a 100% "fresh" (positive) rating.[51]
According to a 2002 article in the Los Angeles Times, the film facilitated the refounding of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.[52] As late as the 1970s, the Ku Klux Klan continued to use the film as a recruitment tool.
American Film Institute recognition
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies No. 44
Sequel[edit]
A sequel called The Fall of a Nation was released in 1916. The film was directed by Thomas Dixon, Jr., who adapted it from his own novel The Fall of a Nation. The film has three acts and a prologue.[53] Despite its success in the foreign market, the film was not a success among the American audiences.[54] It is believed that it is now a lost film.
New opening titles on re-release[edit]
One famous part of the film was added by Griffith only on the second run of the film[55] and is missing from most online versions of the film (presumably taken from first run prints.)[56]
These are the second and third of three opening title cards which defend the film. The added titles read:
A PLEA FOR THE ART OF THE MOTION PICTURE: We do not fear censorship, for we have no wish to offend with improprieties or obscenities, but we do demand, as a right, the liberty to show the dark side of wrong, that we may illuminate the bright side of virtue – the same liberty that is conceded to the art of the written word – that art to which we owe the Bible and the works of Shakespeare
and
If in this work we have conveyed to the mind the ravages of war to the end that war may be held in abhorrence, this effort will not have been in vain.
Various film historians have expressed a range of views about these titles. To Nicholas Andrew Miller, this shows that "Griffith's greatest achievement in The Birth of a Nation was that he brought the cinema's capacity for spectacle... under the rein of an outdated by comfortably literary form of historical narrative. Griffith's models... are not the pioneers of film spectacle... but the giants of literary narrative."[57] On the other hand, S. Kittrell Rushing complains about Griffith's "didactic" title-cards,[58] while Stanley Corkin complains that Griffith "masks his idea of fact in the rhetoric of high art and free expression" and creates film which "erodes the very ideal" of "liberty" which he asserts.[59]
Home media[edit]
With the film being in the public domain, many VHS versions of the film exist of varying quality.
A region 0 DVD was released on November 17, 1998, by Image Entertainment, along with a 24-minute documentary covering the production. Kino Video released another region 0 version on August 14, 2002, and a region 0 Blu-ray edition on November 22, 2011. Both came with various Civil War shorts directed by Griffith, "The Making of The Birth of a Nation" (1992), and other extras.
In The UK, the film was released on Blu-ray on July 22, 2013, by Eureka Entertainment as part of their "Masters of Cinema" collection.
See also[edit]
Portal icon Film in the United States portal
Portal icon Discrimination portal
Portal icon African-Americans portal
List of films featuring slavery
References[edit]
Notes
1.Jump up ^ "D. W. Griffith: Hollywood Independent". Cobbles.com. 1917-06-26. Retrieved 2013-07-03.
2.Jump up ^ "THE BIRTH OF A NATION (U)". Western Import Co. Ltd. British Board of Film Classification. Retrieved August 20, 2013.
3.^ Jump up to: a b William K. Everson, American Silent Film. New York: Da Capo Press, 1978, p. 78
4.Jump up ^ the-numbers.com
5.^ Jump up to: a b c d Schickel, Richard (1984). D.W. Griffith: An American Life. Simon and Schuster. p. 281. ISBN 0671225960.
6.Jump up ^ Review, synopsis and link to watch the film: "A cinema history". Retrieved 10 July 2014.
7.Jump up ^ MJ Movie Reviews – Birth of a Nation, The (1915) by Dan DeVore[dead link]
8.Jump up ^ Armstrong, Eric M. (February 26, 2010). "Revered and Reviled: D.W. Griffith's ‘The Birth of a Nation’". The Moving Arts Film Journal. Retrieved April 13, 2010.
9.^ Jump up to: a b ""The Birth of a Nation" Sparks Protest". Mass Moments. Retrieved 2013-07-03.
10.Jump up ^ "Top Ten – Top 10 Banned Films of the 20th century – Top 10 – Top 10 List – Top 10 Banned Movies – Censored Movies – Censored Films". Alternativereel.com. Retrieved 2013-07-03.
11.Jump up ^ "A Birth of a Nation essays". Megaessays.com. Retrieved 2013-07-03.
12.Jump up ^ Stokes p111. Books.google.ie. Retrieved 2013-07-03.
13.Jump up ^ Prior to this, in 1914, the Italian film Cabiria had been shown on the White House lawn. Kennedy, Ross A. (2013). A Companion to Woodrow Wilson. John Wiley & Sons. p. 29. ISBN 1118445686
14.Jump up ^ The Worst Thing About “Birth of a Nation” Is How Good It Is: The New Yorker retrieved 19 May 2014
15.Jump up ^ The Birth of a Nation (1915)
16.Jump up ^ ...(the) portrayal of "Austin Stoneman" (bald, clubfoot; mulatta mistress, etc.) made no mistaking that, of course, Stoneman was Thaddeus Stevens..." Robinson, Cedric J.; Forgeries of Memory and Meaning. University of North Carolina, 2007; p. 99.
17.Jump up ^ Garsman, Ian; "The Tragic Era Exposed." Website: Reel American History; Lehigh University Digital Library, 2011-2012; Accessed 23 Jan. 2013.
18.Jump up ^ Griffith followed the then-dominant Dunning School or "Tragic Era" view of Reconstruction presented by early 20th-century historians such as William Archibald Dunning and Claude G. Bowers. Stokes 2007, pp. 190–191.
19.Jump up ^ Leistedt, Samuel J.; Linkowski, Paul (January 2014). "Psychopathy and the Cinema: Fact or Fiction?". Journal of Forensic Sciences (American Academy of Forensic Sciences) 59 (1): 167–174. doi:10.1111/1556-4029.12359. Retrieved January 17, 2014.
20.^ Jump up to: a b Consumer Price Index calculator at Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis website
21.Jump up ^ Seelye, Katharine Q. "When Hollywood's Big Guns Come Right From the Source", The New York Times, June 10, 2002.
22.Jump up ^ Dirks, Tim, The Birth of a Nation, filmsite.org Retrieved May 27, 2010.
23.Jump up ^ "Birth of a Nation" at the Internet Archive. Retrieved August 2, 2009.
24.^ Jump up to: a b c d Hickman 2006, p. 77.
25.Jump up ^ Hickman 2006, pp. 68–69.
26.^ Jump up to: a b Hickman 2006, p. 78.
27.^ Jump up to: a b Marks, Martin Miller (1997). Music and the Silent Film : Contexts and Case Studies, 1895-1924. Oxford University Press. pp. 127–135. ISBN 9780195361636.
28.Jump up ^ Eder, Bruce. "Birth of a Nation [Original Soundtrack]". AllMusic. All Media Network, LLC. Retrieved February 6, 2014.
29.Jump up ^ Copeland, David (2010). The Media's Role in Defining the Nation: The Active Voice. Peter Lang Publisher. p. 168.
30.Jump up ^ NAACP – Timeline Archived 5 January 2010 at WebCite
31.Jump up ^ "The Birth of a Nation", The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow: Jim Crow Stories, PBS
32.Jump up ^ Gaines, Jane M. (2001). Fire and Desire: Mixed-Race Movies in the Silent Era. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 334.
33.Jump up ^ Letter from J. M. Tumulty, secretary to President Wilson, to the Boston branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, quoted in Link, Wilson.
34.Jump up ^ Woodrow Wilson to Joseph P. Tumulty, April 28, 1915 in Wilson, Papers, 33:86.
35.^ Jump up to: a b Mayer, David (2009). Stagestruck Filmmaker: D.W. Griffith & the American Theatre. University of Iowa Press. p. 166. ISBN 1587297906.
36.Jump up ^ New York Times. Retrieved September 29, 2011.
37.Jump up ^ "Rebirth of a Nation at Paula Cooper Gallery". Paulacoopergallery.com. 2004-06-18. Retrieved 2013-07-03.
38.Jump up ^ Aberdeen, J. A. Distribution: States Rights or Road Show", Hollywood Renegades Archive. Retrieved May 2, 2014.
39.Jump up ^ "Show Business: Record Wind". Time. February 19, 1940. Archived from the original on February 2, 2010. Retrieved April 29, 2014.
40.Jump up ^ Rucker, Walter C.; Upton, James N., eds. (2007). Encyclopedia of American race riots. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 35. ISBN 978-0-313-33301-9.
41.Jump up ^ Kindem, Gorham Anders (2000). The international movie industry. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. p. 314. ISBN 0809322994.
42.Jump up ^ UG.edu, Digital History.
43.Jump up ^ Stokes 2007, pp. 190–91.
44.Jump up ^ Ebert, Roger. "SunTimes.com". Rogerebert.suntimes.com. Retrieved 2013-07-03.
45.Jump up ^ Marc Egnal, Clash of Extremes, 2009.
46.Jump up ^ West, Jerry Lee. The Reconstruction Ku Klux Klan in York County, South Carolina, 1865–1877 (2002) p. 67
47.Jump up ^ Nicholas Lemann, Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2006, p. 150-154
48.Jump up ^ Brownlow, Kevin (1968). The Parade's Gone By.... University of California Press. p. 78. ISBN 0520030680.
49.^ Jump up to: a b Ebert, Roger. "The Birth of a Nation (1915)". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved February 21, 2011.
50.Jump up ^ Finler, Joel Waldo (2003). The Hollywood Story. Wallflower Press. p. 47. ISBN 978-1-903364-66-6.
51.Jump up ^ "The Birth of a Nation Movie Reviews". Rotten Tomatoes. IGN Entertainment, Inc. Archived from the original on June 29, 2011. Retrieved July 19, 2008.
52.Jump up ^ Hartford-HWP.com, A Painful Present as Historians Confront a Nation's Bloody Past.
53.Jump up ^ The Fall of a Nation (1916) at the Internet Movie Database
54.Jump up ^ Slide, Anthony (2004). American Racist: The Life and Films of Thomas Dixon. University Press of Kentucky. p. 102. ISBN 978-0-8131-2328-8.
55.Jump up ^ Richard Schickel (1984). D. W. Griffith: An American Life. New York: Limelight Editions, p. 282
56.Jump up ^ This includes the one at the Internet Movie Archive [1] and the Google video copy [2] and Veoh Watch Videos Online | The Birth of a Nation | Veoh.com. However, of multiple YouTube copies one which has the full opening titles is DW GRIFFITH THE BIRTH OF A NATION PART 1 1915 on YouTube
57.Jump up ^ Miller, Nicholas Andrew (2002). Modernism, Ireland and the erotics of memory. Cambridge University Press. p. 226. ISBN 0-521-81583-5.
58.Jump up ^ Rushing, S. Kittrell (2007). Memory and myth: the Civil War in fiction and film from Uncle Tom's cabin to Cold mountain. Purdue University Press. p. 307. ISBN 1-55753-440-3.
59.Jump up ^ Corkin, Stanley (1996). Realism and the birth of the modern United States:cinema, literature, and culture. University of Georgia Press. pp. 144–145. ISBN 0-8203-1730-6.
BibliographyAddams, Jane, in Crisis: A Record of Darker Races, X (May 1915), 19, 41, and (June 1915), 88.
Bogle, Donald. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films (1973).
Brodie, Fawn M. Thaddeus Stevens, Scourge of the South (New York, 1959), p. 86–93. Corrects the historical record as to Dixon's false representation of Stevens in this film with regard to his racial views and relations with his housekeeper.
Chalmers, David M. Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan (New York: 1965), p. 30 *Cook, Raymond Allen. Fire from the Flint: The Amazing Careers of Thomas Dixon (Winston-Salem, N.C., 1968).
Franklin, John Hope. "Silent Cinema as Historical Mythmaker". In Myth America: A Historical Anthology, Volume II. 1997. Gerster, Patrick, and Cords, Nicholas. (editors.) Brandywine Press, St. James, NY. ISBN 978-1-881089-97-1
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. Describes the history of the novel The Clan and this film.
Franklin, John Hope, Reconstruction After the Civil War (Chicago, 1961), p. 5–7.
Hickman, Roger. Reel Music: Exploring 100 Years of Film Music (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006).
Hodapp, Christopher L., VonKannon, Alice, Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies (Hoboken: Wiley, 2008) p. 235–6.
Korngold, Ralph, Thaddeus Stevens. A Being Darkly Wise and Rudely Great (New York: 1955) pp. 72–76. 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), p. 23–39.
New York Times, roundup of reviews of this film, March 7, 1915.
The New Republica, II (March 20, 1915), 185
Poole, W. Scott, Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting (Waco, Texas: Baylor, 2011), 30. ISBN 978-1-60258-314-6
Simkins, Francis B., "New Viewpoints of Southern Reconstruction", Journal of Southern History, V (February, 1939), pp. 49–61.
Stokes, Melvyn, D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation: A History of "The Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time" (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). 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). This book corrects Dixon's false reporting of Reconstruction, as shown in his novel, his play and this film.
External links[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Birth of a Nation.
The Birth of a Nation at the Internet Movie Database
The Birth of a Nation is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
The Birth of a Nation at the TCM Movie Database
The Birth of a Nation at AllMovie
The Birth of a Nation at Rotten Tomatoes
GMU.edu, "Art (and History) by Lightning Flash": The Birth of a Nation and Black Protest
The Birth of a Nation on Roger Ebert's list of great movies
The Birth of a Nation on filmsite.org, a web site offering comprehensive summaries of classic films
The Myth of a Nation by Greg Ferrara, challenging some of the "firsts" listed by film historians
Souvenir Guide for The Birth of a Nation, hosted by the Portal to Texas History
Virtual-History.com, Literature
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Categories: 1915 films
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