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D.W. Griffith's the Birth of a Nation: A History of the Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time

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Melvyn Stokes has written a book that should provide most people with everything they need to know about D.W. Griffith's epic film "The Birth of a Nation." The author includes background on the sources for the film, the life and career of Griffith, details on the making of the film, the initial reception of the film, the contemporary controversy, subsequent history of the film and some of the main people involved with it, a discussion of the historical veracity, and a some overview of modern scholarly opinion about the film. The book itself is a scholarly work, with large bibliography and extensive footnotes. However, the book itself is not very long and reads quite well, so that anyone with an interest in this subject should find it difficult to put down.

"The Birth of a Nation" has to be considered as the greatest film in the history of American film. Most films up to this time had been short, fairly simple and direct amusements seen inexpensively largely by working class and immigrant audiences. Audiences at the time had never seen anything with this epic sweep, spectacular historical recreations, emotional intensity, and gripping suspenseful action. Audiences and commentators were bowled over, the film was seen by millions, and it made a ton of money. The form and perception of movies were changed forever.

On the other hand, the film must be the most racist ever to come out of mainstream Hollywood. Not just casually or unconsciously, but really ideologically racist. Though the film deals with Northern and Southern characters and historical figures (and caricatures) through the Civil War into Reconstruction, the main thrust of the plot is toward the birth of the Ku Klux Klan and its brave riders restoring white supremacy and saving white women from the old fate-worse-than. Though the source material book (or two) and play by Thomas W. Dixon (well-discussed by Stokes) may make their points more explicitly, the blood and thunder of Griffith's film technique make them more powerfully. Perhaps it is somehow fitting that this seminal American film should be infused with the stain of racism, not unlike the U.S. Constitution.

The book contains a fair number of factual repetitions, and I would have liked some discussion the state and variations among existing prints of the film. Aside from these minor points, I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in this film, D.W. Griffith, or film history. It may even provide you with sufficient context to enable you to watch the film.

If you are interested in the The Birth of a Nation, how it came to be made, its place in movie history, and the reaction to it, this is the book for you. For the casual movie fan, the level of detail is probably overkill. Melvyn Stokes, a British academic, appears to have read the entire voluminous scholarly literature on the movie; he also did significant archival work, particularly in the papers of the NAACP. As can be seen from the picture of an NAACP protest on the cover of the book, that group's decades long attempt to suppress the movie is a key focus of the book. In addition, though, Stokes provides useful and interesting background on the life of Thomas Dixon, the now (thankfully!) forgotten author of the books The Birth of A Nation is based on, as well as on Griffith's pre-Birth movie career. I found the discussion of how the film was marketed to be particularly interesting. Stokes also is quite good on the contrast between the actual history of the Reconstruction era and the history of this period contained in the film. Griffith apparently offered $10,000 to anyone who could show that there was a significant historical inaccuracy in the film. It's amazing that no one took him up on it! Stokes's discussion of the film's impact seems evenhanded. Although there are those who blame it for significantly helping to bring about a revival of the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920s, Stokes doubts that the film's influence was that extensive.

I have a few small quibbles: I was surprised that there wasn't more discussion of the actual filming. I don't know how much is known about this, but it would have been interesting to have had a longer discussion of how Griffith decided what to include in the film, what changes he may have made during the months of filming, and whether he always intended to make the Ku Klux Klan the heroes of the film. The film is often described as having various running times, so it would also have been useful to have had a discussion of the different versions of the film and some indication of which of the existing versions comes closest to what audiences in 1915 are likely to have seen.

The book inspired me to finally watch The Birth of a Nation all the way through, and there was quite a lot in it that I found surprising. Although it was apparently a technical leap forward for the time, not being a silent movie buff, I will have to take the opinion of Stokes and other scholars for this. To my mind, the picture is technically quite primitive. The makeup on many of the actors seems crudely applied, the acting is often overwrought, and -- most surprisingly -- it doesn't seem well photographed. Even the famous battle scenes are difficult to make out and trees often block the action. The Cameron's home in Piedmont is apparently supposed to be a plantation house, and some scenes are set in the cotton fields, yet the house is plainly shown as being on a street in the town, with houses on either side, which seems odd because you would expect a plantation house to be on its own land outside of town. As Stokes points out, Griffith -- apparently, for racist reasons -- insisted on using white actors in burnt cork makeup to play the key African-American parts, which reduces whatever scant realism the film might otherwise have had. I can accept that movie audiences in 1915, used to very short films with minimal stories and no production values, might have found The Birth of a Nation to be quite a spectacle, but it's surprising that the film was still being shown in theaters as late as the 1940s; the protest shown on the cover dates from 1947!