The Birth of a Controversy: Contemporary reaction to The Birth of a Nation
Leo Miller | ENGL 386
The greatest movie ever seen. The most racist film ever made. The most
controversial motion picture of all time. Over the years, people have described D.W.
Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation in all these ways and more. The reasons for this praise,
outrage, and division need hardly be restated; anyone who has not seen Griffith’s 1915
epic has felt the effect of its legacy on film culture, and indeed on wider American
culture at large. The greatness of Birth’s storytelling, the mythos of its production, the
charisma of its director, and of course, the racism of its ideology has ensured that
viewers continue to discuss and debate over the film to this day. Nowadays, it is widely
recognized that the film was a formative milestone in cinema that set a high bar for
effectiveness of storytelling and film form, and also an example of the stereotyping,
misrepresentation, and historical inaccuracy that cinema has yet to fully break free of.
However, that begs the question: How was the film received in its own time? When the
first audiences in 1915 sat in the theatre watching what was an unprecedented
cinematic experience, what did they feel? This paper will present a detailed look at the
reception, perception, and reaction to D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. It will include
an analysis of the film’s story, production, and ideology, and then examine the film’s
reception in America, including the variety of public opinion, official publication, and
public action taken both in support of and against the film.
It must be said that there are very good reasons The Birth of a Nation holds its
important place in film history. The film introduced so many cinematic, editing, and story
techniques that it would have been notable whatever its subject matter. In the realm of
cinematic technique, Birth can be credited with popularizing the tracking shot for
storytelling effect. Many battle and chase scenes employ this active camera move.
Griffith also used close-ups as no one had before: most films up to this point used
mostly long shots, and so had a theatrical style. Griffith used close-ups to heighten the
emotion of his characters, and to push his film from the older theatrical style into a new
style of realism.
In the realm of editing, this film was one of the first to make use of dissolve
transitions. The fading of an empty senate chamber into one filled with black lawmakers
implies the passage of time without having to show the men filling the room. This film
also popularized the flashback, or as Griffith called it, “switchback.” (Stokes 73) Perhaps
most exciting to audiences, Griffith is also credited with inventing intercutting. The
editing in the final scenes of Birth between the entrapped whites and the Klan’s ride to
the rescue bring the scene and the movie to a thrilling climax. This technique is still one
of the most effective ways modern filmmakers have to enhance tension or draw a
parallel between two scenes. Given the volume of films made in America at this time
and the fact that many of them are lost today, it is hard to say whether Griffith “invented”
any of these techniques, but The Birth of a Nation took an important step in putting them
into service of a larger, artistic story.
This film’s advancements in storytelling cannot be overlooked, either. No film had
brought history into a narrative as effectively as this. Lavishly staged battlefields show
the horrors of war. The film pays great attention to detail in its recreations of historical
figures and events. Its use of quotations from Woodrow Wilson and other towering
figures add legitimacy to its telling of history. Modern writers recognize many ways in
which Griffith’s history is, in fact, inaccurate, but the film makes the viewer believe it
could all be true. D.W. Griffith can be credited with taking a leap, in Birth, from the
superficial cinema of spectacle that largely imitated theatre performances, to the
realization of cinema as a unique, fully realized art form.
Having analyzed the revolutionary technique of Griffith’s film, we come to the
question of what meaning this art form is creating. A civil war epic by genre, the story of
The Birth of a Nation is even more ripe for analysis and critique than its production.
One of the interesting elements of the story is its relationship to Civil War history.
The film tells a story of two families, the Northern Stonemasons and the Southern
Camerons, who are good friends, and pass a pleasant holiday in the antebellum South.
Once, the Civil War begins, however, neighbor is forced to fight against neighbor, and
two of the families’ youngest sons kill each other on the battlefield. The first half of the
film focuses on the Civil War, and includes the personal drama of the families as well as
epic historical moments like the peace at Appomattox. The second half of the film
focuses on the period of Reconstruction following the war. It shows the restructuring of
government after the end of the war, the Northern and Southern politics of the time, and
the attempts at ending slavery and integrating black people into society.
This is where we must note the film’s biases in the telling of history. Owing
to D.W. Griffith’s Southern upbringing, this film was largely conceived to tell the story of
the Civil War and Reconstruction from a Southern perspective. Thusly, it has been
described as heavily influenced by the “lost cause” myth of this time period. The lost
cause myth is the Southern belief that the Confederacy’s cause in the war was noble,
and the romanticization of the South, especially the pre-war South when slavery was
still in effect. The Birth of a Nation reveals this influence throughout its runtime.
The first part of the film, before the war even begins, shows the South as an
idyllic place where “gracious and cultivated” White society was “willingly served by black
slaves”. (Stokes 178) In particular, the scene of Ben Cameron visiting the slave quarters
reinforces this idea. The slaves greet him warmly, dance for him, and seem to be happy
in their position. Importantly, the Northern visitors to the Cameron house, the
Stonemasons, are not offended by the Camerons’ slaveholding status; they greet the
slaves just the same as the Southerners. (Stokes 182) This scene, and much of the first
part of the film, has the effect of normalizing slavery as an institution favored by
Southerners, Northerners, and even blacks alike.
Once the Civil War does commence in the narrative, the action is framed to place
the South in the position of an underdog, and to win the audience’s sympathy for the
rebel South. Griffith’s timeline of the war skips over the Southern attack on Fort Sumter,
and shows the first event in the conflict to be Lincoln signing a call for volunteers. The
film shows the Camerons’ wealth diminished as a result of the war effort, as Flora
Cameron “wears her last good dress”. Near the end of the first half, a renegade group of
Union soldiers invade the innocent Camerons’ home and menace their daughters. All of
these are events that may well have happened in the history of the Civil War, but the
telling of them from a Southern viewpoint establishes the South’s innocence and
underdog status, which essential to the second half of the film.
The film’s second half focuses on the Reconstruction period after the fall of the
Confederacy. This half continues the ideology of the lost cause, now extending it to
paint Reconstruction as a time of chaos and racial upset.
After the Union won the war, Griffith’s narrative goes, Northern
opportunists, called “carpetbaggers,” travelled South to exploit the newly freed black
populace for money and political gain, and the power of black people in the South
began to outstrip that of white people. There are many scenes in the film which support
this narrative. black soldiers physically prevent Cameron and other whites from voting.
Silas Lynch bullies the “little Colonel” into getting out of the way of black soldiers on the
sidewalk. The sequence of the majority-black South Carolina House of Representatives
shows the black members being disorderly, uncivilized, and generally turning the place
upside down. This second half of the film is where modern audiences find the racial
misrepresentation and historical inaccuracy most difficult to watch. Modern historians
agree that there was no powerful “black South” that threatened to eclipse White power.
(Stokes 197) The storytelling in this section, all its focus and bending of history, is going
toward setting up the legitimacy of the Ku Klux Klan as folk heroes and saviors of the
South.
When that final shoe drops, and the Little Colonel establishes the Klan in the
latter parts of the film, Griffith’s storytelling makes it seem very plausible that this
“Invisible Empire” was necessary to maintain law and order in the South. Modern
audiences, of course, will find Griffith’s ending distasteful. But what about the American
people of 1915? The next section will examine the response by audiences and official
organizations when The Birth of a Nation was first released.
The first few audiences which saw The Birth of a Nation were in New York, Los
Angeles, and Washington, D.C. Leading up to the New York premiere, Griffith and
company had advertised the film as “A red blooded tale of true American spirit” which
was “the mightiest spectacle ever produced.” (Stokes 115) Since Birth was in many
ways the most ambitious motion picture ever attempted, there was a lot riding on these
early showings. According to accounts of the early preview audiences, there was
spontaneous applause from the audience even during the early scenes of Piedmont,
and the applause during the Civil War scenes was “nearly incessant for a full half-hour.”
The first preview audience requested Griffith come out and speak, which he gladly did.
Reportedly, audiences continued to come thick and fast once general showings started.
The New York Commercial commented, “There has not been a vacant seat in the house
since the opening performance, and crowds have been turned away at every
presentation.”
The subsequent showings in other cities went similarly well. A Los Angeles
newspaper said the demand for seats “was unprecedented, the house being sold out
days ahead at prices ranging from twenty-five to seventy-five cents with box seats at a
dollar.” (Lennig 120) Even Boston, where Griffith had feared public opinion might not be
so friendly to the film, was soon selling out theaters four weeks in advance. An
advertisement in the Boston Evening Transcript said that by its “third triumphant week”,
50,000 Bostonians had already seen the film. (Lennig 128) Reports of Birth’s public
reception generally do not note the composition of the theater audiences: whether they
are mostly composed of one race or another, or anything about social class. However, If
there was any distaste for this film’s message in the general public, it certainly did not
show itself at these early screenings.
Perhaps more ecstatic than the audiences were the professional reviewers and
critics of the time. From the first preview for journalists in New York, the papers were
giving Griffith’s film glowing reviews. According to the Evening Mail, “The mind falters
and the typewriter baulks before an attempt to either measure or describe D.W. Griffith’s
crowning achievement in screen drama.” the Standard Union declared, “Judged by all
the photo dramas New York has given, this new film spectacle is the greatest and
largest ever produced.” (Stokes 116) Reviews were similarly ecstatic in other places. A
writer for the Los Angeles times called the film “the greatest picture that was ever made
and the biggest drama ever filmed”. (Lennig 120) In fact, when black citizenry and
groups like the NAACP did start expressing opposition to the movie and finally start
agitating against it, many publications came out in outright disapproval of these efforts.
Grace Kingsley of the Los Angeles Times commented, “And now … comes the protest
of the darkies and the interference of the police”. (Lennig 120) Some of the only
publications that were in any way critical of the film were black-run papers, such as the
New York Age. On the day after the premiere, the dramatic editor of this paper asserted
that the film “appeals to baser passions and seeks to disrupt friendly relations between
white and colored citizens of New York City”. (Glick 174) In general, however, these
criticisms seem to have been lost in the wave of public support for The Birth of a Nation.
The only real opposition to the film came from the NAACP. This is where the
small section of the national population who did take issue with the film was
concentrated. After its premiere in New York, the Los Angeles branch of the
organization appealed to the Los Angeles City Board of Censors to ban the film before it
came to the city. However, the censors passed the film with only “a few very slight and
unimportant eliminations’. The NAACP’s appeal to the Chief of Police to suppress the
film also failed. The organization tried similar tactics in New York, appealing to the
censorship board and putting pressure on various politicians to ban the film, to the
disapproval of the general public. The relatively small group of objectors to the film were
tireless in pursuing other avenues of protest, from sending delegations to City Hall to
demanding a hearing with Griffith and Thomas Dixon Jr., author of the book on which
the movie was based. Boston was the NAACP’s site of greatest effort, where they
organized pickets of theaters showing the film, and certain less moderate protestors
outside the NAACP considered militant means. Ultimately, all these efforts at protest
were fruitless for a few reasons. First and foremost was the question of freedom of
expression. The NAACP was invested in the welfare of black people, obviously, but it
was also composed mainly of liberals, many of whom wanted to avoid censorship on
principle. This divided the members of the NAACP as early as the New York screenings,
and was a major talking point of the pro-Birth public. The second reason was simply
because the public was already so greatly in favor of the film. Griffith’s work was so
appreciated that any opposition to it was only seen as stirring up trouble. Lastly, the
problem with protesting a film is that the wider the protests reached, the more curious
the public became about the movie. The NAACP could not publicize their cause without
also giving the film free advertisement, and the shrewd Griffith and Dixon capitalized on
this advertisement to increase their profits even more. Although the NAACP made some
small gains in terms of having scenes cut from the film, their cause seems to have been
lost from the start.
Making generalizations about The Birth of a Nation is a difficult task. With a film
that has been seen by hundreds of millions, and come to represent and influence so
much within American culture, it is hard to imagine a time when it was just another
movie, first opening to a few theatres at a time. Although public opinion was surely very
diverse, a few points are clear: At this point in American history, D.W. Griffith’s views
were quite mainstream. Even in liberal parts of the country, public press and cinema
attendance showed that for America in 1915, The Birth of a Nation represented ideas
that many people agreed with. Whether they did not see the racism in this historic film,
agreed with it, or were just willing to accept it, the story of Griffith’s masterpiece should
be a cautionary tale that filmmakers do, in fact, wield great power to speak to the public,
and that they must use this power wisely.
Staiger, Janet. Interpreting Films: Studies in the Historical Reception of American
Cinema. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Stokes, Melvyn. D.W. Griffith's the Birth of a Nation: A History of the Most Controversial
Motion Picture of All Time. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Lennig, Arthur. "Myth and Fact: The Reception of The Birth of a Nation." Film History:
An International Journal 16, no. 2 (2004): 117-41. doi:10.2979/fil.2004.16.2.117.
Glick. "Mixed Messages: D.W. Griffith and the Black Press, 1916––1931." Film History
23, no. 2 (2011): 174. doi:10.2979/filmhistory.23.2.174.