D W Griffith's The Birth of a Nation

by Melvyn Stokes

  152. So much did Gish “suffer” as a Griffith heroine that one critic would eventually facetiously suggest creating a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Lillian Gish. Schickel, Griffith, 393.

  153. Ibid., 353, 356, 360.

  154. Simmon, The Films of D. W. Griffith, 12.

  155. In any event, only two films were made under this contract. Neither was at all memorable: The Greatest Question (1919) and The Idol Dancer.

  156. Schickel, Griffith, 415–17, 419–22, 428, 448.

  157. Ibid., 450, 460–61, 464, 472–74, 482, 491, 494, 498.

  158. Robert W. Chambers, “The Sacrifice,” reprinted in Film Comment 21, no. 4 (July–August 1985): 72.

  159. Schickel, Griffith, 458–59, 491.

  160. Ibid, 495, 498, 506, 514–17, 524–25.

  161. Ibid, 529–31, 537–43.

  162. Taylor would achieve an immortality of sorts in one line of the credits for the Douglas Fairbanks/Mary Pickford sound version of The Taming of the Shrew (1929): “By William Shakespeare. Additional dialogue by Sam Taylor.” Ibid., 544.

  163. Ibid., 544–45, 551–52.

  164. Ibid., 553–57, 559.

  165. David Thomson, Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick (London: Abacus, 1993), 235; Selznick to Wm. Wright, January 5, 1937, in Memo from David O. Selznick, 158.

  166. Slide, American Racist, 93. By contrast, Breil’s score for The Birth of a Nation had been compiled from already existing musical pieces, with some original pieces by Breil himself.

  167. Slide, American Racist, 92–93, 96, 101–102; Cook, Fire from the Flint, 184–88.

  168. Slide, American Racist, 157–61; Cook, Fire from the Flint, 197–98.

  169. Anthony Slide emphasizes the irony of Dixon’s film career: beginning with a pro-Klan picture (The Birth of a Nation), it ended by vilifying the Klan. Slide, American Racist, 183.

  170. Cook, Fire from the Flint, 206–12, 222; Slide, American Racist, 185; “Dixon Penniless: $1,250,000 Gone,” Times [New York], April 17, 1934, 19.

  171. Thomas Dixon, The Sun Virgin (New York: Horace Liveright, 1929); Slide, American Racist, 165–66; Cook, Fire from the Flint, 212–13; Thomas Dixon and Harry M. Daugherty, The Inside Story of the Harding Tragedy (New York: Churchill, 1932). Dixon also wrote a book on a boy’s colony in Portugal, published in 1934.

  172. Cook, Fire from the Flint, 216–17, 219–21. Black historian John Hope Franklin, working on his Ph.D. in Raleigh, was regularly greeted with “a warm smile” from “a courtly gentleman outside the courthouse.” Later, having discovered that the old gentleman was Thomas Dixon, Franklin wondered whether his welcoming smile “was more a reflection of his secret delight at keeping ‘the likes of me’ out of any governmental office more influential than ‘a Jim Crow cubby-hole in the State Archives.’” D’Oogle, “The Birth of a Nation: Symposium on Classic Film Discusses Inaccuracies and Virtues,” 265.

  173. Cook, Fire from the Flint, 223–26; Slide, American Racist, 186–88. Dixon might have been pleased to know that he was buried in the same cemetery as another well-known commentator on the South: W. J. Cash.

  174. “Mutual Co. Fight Is On and Aitken May Be Deposed,” Telegraph [New York], June 17, 1915; “Aitken Out of Mutual Films,” Sun [New York], June 24, 1915; “Three Film Men in Big Combine,” Herald [New York], June 18, 1915; all in DWGP.

  175. “Triangle Film Formed,” New York Times, July 21, 1915; Nelson and Jones, A Silent Siren Song, 165.

  176. Koszarski, An Evening’s Entertainment, 68; Nelson and Jones, A Silent Siren Song, 162, 166–69.

  177. Nelson and Jones, A Silent Siren Song, 160–61, 163, 182.

  178. Ibid., 169–70. It has also been suggested that the negotiations failed because Harry refused to put two other Aitken companies—Epoch (distributing The Birth of a Nation) and the Western Import Company (distributing films in Europe)—into the new combination. Ibid, 170.

  179. Ibid., 171–72, 174, 176–77, 180–81, 183–85.

  180. Accounts of the Epoch Producing Corporation, March 13, 1915, DWGP.

  181. Robert Goldstein, “The True Story of the Making of a Motion Picture and Its Maker, Written in Narrative Form, Comprising the Facts,” in Robert Goldstein and “The Spirit of ’76,” ed. Anthony Slide (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1993), especially 7–51. Griffith’s version of the story of the American Revolution, America, was released in 1924.

  182. Motion Picture News 15, no. 21 (May 26, 1917), 3300, reprinted in Slide, Robert Goldstein, 203.

  183. For a summary of the film’s complex plot, see Slide, Robert Goldstein, 30–35.

  184. Ibid., 34, 95–96, quotation on 104.

  185. G. P. Harleman, “‘Spirit of ‘76’ Confiscated by Government,” The Moving Picture World, December 22, 1917, 1786, reprinted in Slide, Robert Goldstein, 212; Michael Selig, “United States v. Motion Picture Film The Spirit of ’76: The Espionage Case of Producer Robert Goldstein (1917),” Journal of Popular Film and Television 10, no. 4 (Winter 1983): 170–71.

  186. “Spirit of ‘76 Film Called Part of Plot: Picture Incites to Mutiny Is Allegation—Producer May Be Given Penitentiary Sentence,” Movie Picture World, December 29, 1917, 1947, reprinted in Slide, Robert Goldstein, 214–15.

  187. Anthony Slide, “The Spirit of ’76,” and the Strange Case of Robert Goldstein,” Films in Review 27, no. 1 (January 1976): 4.

  188. Selig, “United States v. Motion Picture Film The Spirit of “76,” 169, 173; G. P. Harleman, “Goldstein Is Sentenced to Ten Years: Producer of The Spirit of ‘76 Is Sent to the Federal Penitentiary and Fined $5,000,” Moving Picture World, May 25, 1918, 145, reprinted in Slide, Robert Goldstein, 219. Also see ibid., xxi–xxii.

  189. Gish’s 1969 autobiography was revealingly entitled The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me. In her will, she made a bequest to the Museum of Modern Art “so they could protect the work of Mr. Griffith.” David Thomson, “Lillian Gish,” in The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (London: Little, Brown, 2002), 340.

  190. Slide, American Racist, 78.

  191. Thomas Quinn Curtiss, Von Stroheim (London: Angus and Robertson, 1971), 37–39; John Ford, interview with Richard Schickel, n.d., cited in Schickel, Griffith, 231.

  CONCLUSION

  1. Greg Braxton, “Controversy Reborn,” Los Angeles Times, August 7, 2004, E1, E4; Greg Braxton, “Showing of ‘Birth of a Nation’ canceled,” ibid., August 10, E2; Martin Miller, “No canceling the ‘Birth’ debate,” ibid., August 11, 2004, E6. My thanks to Denise Warren for drawing these articles to my attention.

  2. “The Worth of ‘A Nation,’” Los Angeles Times, September 19, 2004, E1, E24–25.

  3. James Baldwin, The Devil Finds Work (London: Michael Joseph, 1976), 43, 45.

  4. George D. Proctor, “The Birth of a Nation,” Motion Picture News 11, no. 10 (March 13, 1915), 49-50, reprinted in Slide, Selected Film Criticism, 1912–1920, 18; Mark Vance, Variety, March 12, 1915, reprinted in Silva, Focus, 25; Variety, March 12, 1915, quoted in Jacobs, The Rise of the American Film, 175.

  5. Dorothy Dix, “The Birth of a Nation,” Journal [New York], March 5, 1915, quoted in Schickel, Griffith, 278; Harlow Hare, Boston American, July 18, 1915, reprinted in Silva, Focus, 37.

  6. Washington Post, April 11, 1915, DWGP (cf. Journal of Commerce, March 18, 1915, DWGP); Resolutions of the Executive Committee, Boston Branch, NAACP, June 8, 1915, NAACPP.

  7. Jacobs, Rise of the American Film, 187; Herman G. Weinberg, “American Film Directors and Social Reality,” Sight and Sound 7, no. 28 (Winter 1938–39): 168; Agee, Agee on Film, 313; Knight, The Liveliest Art, 23; Sadoul, Histoire Générale du Cinéma, Tome III: Le Cinéma Devient un Art, 25; Jean Mitry, The Aesthetics and Psychology of the Cinema, trans. Christopher King (London: Athlone Press, 1998), 67; Rogin, “The Sword Became a Flashing Vision,” in Lang, The Birth of a Nation, 257.

  8. Chadwick, The Reel Civil War, 103. This shot, as Chadwick points out, would be copied in many later films.

  9. Leger Grind
on, Shadows on the Past: Studies in the Historical Fiction Film (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 17–18. Both Grindon and William K. Everson suggest that it is his mother’s arms that draw Ben Cameron into the house. What is shown, however, on the left of the back of the “Little Colonel” is the slender arm of Flora, with the ruche of her dress sleeve showing; on the right is a broader arm and the plainer sleeve of his mother’s dress. See Grindon, Shadows on the Past, 17; Everson, American Silent Film, 80.

  10. Agee, Agee on Film, 313; Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), viii. In much the same way that the homecoming sequence shows a further evolution in a shot from an earlier film, the battle scenes in The Birth of a Nation often grew out of shots in Griffith Biograph films about the Civil War, such as The Battle (1911).

  11. Andrew Sarris, however, pointed out that “Welles reintroduced the iris dissolve as an expression of nostalgia in The Magnificent Ambersons in 1942, and Ophuls reinvented artificial masking and framing in Lola Montez in 1955 to make CinemaScope more supple, and Godard expressed his fleeting narrative instinct with an iris fadeout in Breathless in 1960. With everything again possible, nothing seems antiquated, Griffith least of all.” Sarris, “BIRTH OF A NATION or White Power Back When,” Village Voice, July 17 and 24, 1969, reprinted in Silva, Focus, 107.

  12. Sadoul, Histoire Générale du Cinéma, Tome III: Le Cinéma Devient un Art, 18; cf. Everson, American Silent Film, 79–80.

  13. Ned Mackintosh, “The Birth of a Nation,” Atlanta Constitution, December 7, 1915, reprinted in Silva, Focus, 34; Grindon, Shadows on the Past, 17 (cf. Sadoul, Histoire Générale du Cinéma, Tome III: Le Cinéma Devient un Art, 23).

  14. Lary May points out that it “became the most widely acclaimed and financially successful film of the entire silent era.” May, Screening Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 67.

  15. William Rothman, The “I” of the Camera: Essays in Film Criticism, History, and Aesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 11.

  16. Brown, Adventures, 74, 76, 88–90, 95–96. “The heart of his craft,” Brown recalled, “was in what we fumblingly called cutting, or editing.” Ibid., 96.

  17. Jacobs, The Rise of the American Film, 187; Brownlow, The Parade’s Gone By, 281.

  18. Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin, America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 235. Benshoff and Griffin illustrate this point by noting that “Griffith continually cuts from Ben Cameron gazing romantically or Silas Lynch gazing threateningly to shots of Elsie Stoneman.” Ibid.

  19. W. Stephen Bush, “The Birth of a Nation,” The Moving Picture World, March 13, 1915, reprinted in Silva, Focus, 27.

  20. Ned Mackintosh, Atlanta Constitution, December 7, 1915, reprinted in Silva, Focus, 34.

  21. Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks, 3–18.

  22. Louella Parsons, “D. W. Griffith in Plea for His Greatest Film,” Herald [New York], May 30, 1915, DWGP.

  23. Yacowar, “Aspects of the Familiar,” 133.

  24. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Memorandum to Mr. White of the N.A.A.C.P. on ‘The Birth of a Nation,’” n.d., NAACPP; D’Ooge, “The Birth of a Nation: Symposium on Classic Film Discusses Inaccuracies and Virtues,” 265; Reddick, “Educational Programs for the Improvement of Race Relations,” 370.

  25. Noble, “The Negro in The Birth of a Nation,” in Silva, Focus, 125–32.

  26. Agee, Agee on Film, 314; Gish, The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me, 162; Everson, American Silent Film, 83–87.

  27. Schickel, Griffith, 29, 213, 233—37, 299.

  28. Carter, “Cultural History Written with Lightning,” in Silva, Focus, 141.

  29. For Griffith’s views of miscegenation (“The negro should be as much opposed to this as the white man”), see Louella Parsons, “D. W. Griffith in Plea for His Greatest Film,” Herald [New York], May 30, 1915, DWGP.

  30. Simmon, The Films of D. W. Griffith, 107. Griffith, as noted in Chapter 4, declined to have any “black blood” among the major players in Birth. Russell Merritt, although not thinking primarily in racial terms, argues that the Gus-Flora chase sequence is far more complex than it might first appear because of Gus’s previously more sympathetic appearances in the film and his hesitancy and nervousness during the chase itself. Merritt, “D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation: Going after Little Sister,” 227–28, 232–33.

  31. According to W. E. B. Du Bois, the number of African Americans lynched increased from sixty in 1914 to ninety-nine in 1915, the year of The Birth of a Nation. The main “alleged excuse” for such lynchings, Du Bois noted, “was the attacks upon white women by colored men,” an issue highlighted in the film by Gus’s pursuit of Flora and Lynch’s wish for a “forced marriage” with Elsie. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Memorandum to Mr. White of the N.A.A.C.P. on ‘The Birth of a Nation,’” n.d., NAACPP.

  32. See Chapter 8.

  33. S. Eisenstein, “To the Editors of International Literature,” in David Platt, Celluloid Power: Social Film Criticism from “The Birth of a Nation” to “Judgement at Nuremberg” (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1992), 81.

  34. Gallagher, “Racist Ideology and Black Abnormality in the Birth of a Nation,” 75.

  35. Michael Rogin, “The Sword Became a Flashing Vision,” in Lang, The Birth of a Nation, 251. [This essay was first published in 1985.]

  36. Clyde Taylor, “The Re-birth of the Aesthetic in Cinema,” in The Birth of Whiteness, ed. Bernardi, 15–37.

  37. Penny Starfield, “Le racisme dans le cinéma américain: entre exclusion et expression,” in Michel Prum, ed., Exclure au nom de la race (États-Unis, Irlande, Grande Bretagne) (Paris: Editions Syllepse, 2000), 51 [my translation].

  38. Donato Totaro, “Birth of a Nation: Viewed Today,” http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/new_offscreen/birthofnation.html, accessed on 29 March 2007; Keil, “Style and Technique,” in Usai, The Griffith Project: Vol. 8, 69.

  39. Other work in reception studies parallels this way of perceiving Birth. For example, in Melodrama and Meaning: History, Culture, and the Films of Douglas Sirk (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), Barbara Klinger shows how films in a body of 1950s melodramas directed by Sirk do not change but are interpreted differently by different institutions (including academia, film critics, the stardom “industry” and mass media) at different times.

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