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D.W. Griffith once said "The task I am trying to achieve is above all to make you see." He certainly works very hard to make sure that the audience understands his viewpoint of the Civil War and Reconstruction, though the film remains one of the most controversial ever created.
We must credit Griffith for expanding the concept of film, since previous Nickelodeon films were limited to one reel (about 10 minutes maximum) that captured people as they might appear in a stage drama. Griffith's Birth of a Nation broke new ground: He demonstrated that the medium could break the constraints of stage drama.
Released 50 years after the end of the Civil War, the 1915 landmark film was the first full-length motion picture (at nearly 3 hours) and the first true blockbuster. It ran for over a year in a number of theaters and profited 10 times the amount of money that it cost to make. Thus, we can credit Griffith's film for jump-starting the film industry, as well as influencing a whole generation of filmmakers.
That said, it's also well-known that Griffith's film also establishes itself as Hollywood's biggest embarrassment for its blatantly racist perspective. Upon its release, social activist Jane Addams denounced the film, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People called for a nationwide ban on Birth of a Nation. To combat these arguments, Griffith pleaded the case for the arts. In fact there is a direct plea early in the film. He states:
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 which we owe the Bible and the works of Shakespeare.
Though Griffith claims intentions to make an anti-war film, he was born in the South and raised by a father who was a Colonel in the Confederacy, and he carries the wounds of Southern Reconstruction in his film. Much of this has to do with the source material: Griffith obtained the rights to Thomas Dixon's novel The Clansman, which glorifies the Ku Klux Klan as the saviors of Aryan culture in the aftermath of Reconstruction.
Griffith certainly captures the novel's racist attitude perfectly with captions and scenes that show the KKK in a heroic light, and other scenes that are so over-the-top racist that they are sadly laughable to modern audiences. Not even Mel Brooks can top some of the items you'll see, like the early scene that shows the slaves dancing and singing happily after a 12-hour cotton-picking stint. Look closer for further laughs, because all the "main" African-Americans in the film are really white people in blackface. At least Gone with the Wind used real African-Americans for its slaves and house servants.
Early filmmakers didn't think that black people were capable of acting, so they practiced extreme discrimination. The worst case of this in Birth of a Nation is the evil Gus, who is played by Walter Long in blackface. And though Griffith prided himself on historical accuracy, painstakingly doing research to re-create historical scenes, the scene showing the African-Americans kicking back in the state legislature with their shoes off was derived from political cartoons of the time and not from an objective source.
Other scenes are remarkable for their authenticity, on the other hand. The re-creation of Lincoln's assassination is so realistic that it feels like it was actually recorded on that fateful April evening in 1865, as does Lee's surrender at Appomattox. In fact, the first half of the film is the strongest portion. Griffith gives an epic sweep to the Civil War, with large-scale battle scenes, while simultaneously intertwining parallel stories of the Stoneman family in the North with their Southern counterparts and friends, the Camerons.
Right here, Griffith has found an epic formula that has been followed ever since by the successful great epics. Any large historical event simply has to have a personal story for the audience to follow. In this case, we especially follow Elsie Stoneman, played by the immortal Lillian Gish, and the Southern man who loves her, Ben Cameron (Henry B. Whitehall).
Griffith also experiments with other film devices that remain today: use of small tidbits of humor, symbolism, and juxtaposition to communicate ideas visually. Early in the film there are rumblings about possible conflict between the North and the South, and Griffith shows the elder Cameron depositing the family cat with a pair of puppies. Later, in a scene that Hitchcock would have been proud to have composed, we see Lillian Gish (shortly after finding that Ben Cameron has amorous desires for her) sitting on her bed, caressing the bedpost. I'm sure Griffith didn't do this by accident.
There's also a great deal that doesn't feel right by today's standards besides the problematic racial content. The youngest Cameron daughter giggles inappropriately when the house is being ransacked by the enemy, and other times the action is too melodramatic. But we must remember that this is a silent film and everything must be communicated visually. For his time Griffith had no peer.
No matter how you view the film, and despite the fact that Griffith himself was repudiated during the last part of his life, this director will forever be regarded as a true innovator in film technique and as one of the greatest film directors of all time. Thus, if you are a student of film, Birth of a Nation will be required viewing. Griffith is universally recognized among filmmakers as a true artist. Others will probably want to pass it up since the racist subject matter is so repugnant. |
