The Birth of a Nation - D.W. Griffith

D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation is a film that is not easy to discuss. It is not a film that can exist within the contained space of a screen, but one that reaches out into the world, its legacy sometimes overshadowing the fact of its craft. It is a landmark film on a technical level, one which helped develop the cinematic language that moviegoers take for granted today. It is also a deeply problematic and offensive film rooted in hate. It is a work that must inevitably be brought up in any discussion of whether artistic craft can be separated from artistic content.

The Birth of a Nation unfolds in two phases. The first takes place prior to the American Civil War, viewed here as an idyllic time when the Northern Stoneman family are friends with the Southern Camerons. The two families are bound to come together – the eldest Stoneman son, Phil (Elmer Clifton) falls in love with Margaret Cameron (Miriam Cooper), and Ben Cameron (Henry B. Walthall) becomes infatuated with Elsie Stoneman (Lillian Gish) – but when the war breaks out, the two families find themselves fighting on opposite sides. Both families lose members during the war and Ben is injured but ultimately survives after receiving treatment in a Northern hospital, where he is nursed by Elsie. The effort is almost wasted, as Ben is slated to be hanged for fighting for the Confederate army, but his mother is able to persuade none other than Abraham Lincoln (Joseph Henabery) himself to give him a pardon.

The war comes to a close but with the assassination of Lincoln, Northern politicians become determined to impose the harshest of punishments on the South and the film moves into its second phase, which details the Reconstruction era. Austin Stoneman (Ralph Lewis), the patriarch of the family, and his protégé Silas Lynch (George Siegmann) lead the charge, pushing through the elections of black politicians into the legislature. When legislation is passed allowing mixed-race marriages, Ben and other Southern men decide to take a stand by forming the Ku Klux Klan and setting things back to right.

Nothing about the movie is racially sensitive, but it isn’t until the half dealing with Reconstruction that it truly earns the controversy that follows it everywhere. The black politicians are depicted as lazy and drunken, the white abolitionist politicians like Austin are depicted as ridiculous, vain and power hungry in contrast to the noble white Southerners. The second half is explicitly driven by white male fears of white female chastity, of the need to protect white women from rape at the hands of lustful black men. In one scene Ben’s sister is pursued by a black man and jumps off a cliff to evade him. In another, Elsie is nearly forced into marriage to Silas, referred to throughout as a mulatto. The members of the Ku Klux Klan are portrayed like medieval knights, their brutality towards the ravenous black hordes an extension of their chivalry towards women.

The politics that inform The Birth of a Nation are indisputably ugly and the film had real life consequences that continue to mark it. The film helped inspire a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and was even used as a recruiting film up until the 1970s. It is also said to have inspired riots in some of the cities where it was shown and an increase of white on black violence. As a result it was banned in many cities, though it still managed to become the greatest box office success of its era. So great was the controversy around the film that Griffith made Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Through the Ages as a means of responding to the criticism. It really can’t be separated from the controversy because the controversial elements are so deeply embedded into it; it’s not simply something that can be written off as being the product of “another time, another mindset” because even at the time of its release, many thought its point-of-view was reprehensible and hateful.

That being said, however, The Birth of a Nation remains a watershed film in its technical aspects. In a technical sense, it is a masterpiece and one of the most important films ever made. The art of filmmaking was still in its infancy when Griffith started shooting The Birth of the Nation in 1914 and the cinematic innovations contained within this film cannot be denied. The war scenes are wonderfully crafted and executed and the scene in which the Klan rides to the rescue of Elsie, despite its ideological implications, is also technically well done. Cameras didn’t really move in this era of filmmaking but Griffith is able to work around that, framing, unfolding and cutting in such a way that it gives a sense of movement to a sequence of shots. The Birth of a Nation is a film that should be seen by anyone with an interest in film history and it’s a film whose craft deserves to be celebrated even though it espouses hateful ideas.