Hailed as a masterpiece at its debut and regularly re-released throughout the 1920s and, even beyond the era of silent cinema, into the 1930s, The Birth of a Nation has been turned in recent years into a source of cinematic embarrassment. Any positive commentary from a technical or artistic standpoint inevitably brings charges of racism from African-American filmmakers and civil rights leaders outraged by Griffith's depiction of the freed slaves. Nobody wants to champion a product so blatantly racist, and even the Library of Congress shied away from the brouhaha in 1989, initially keeping The Birth of a Nation off its National Film Registry list of landmark classic films despite the production's impact on the American film industry. (Griffith was represented on the initial list with his classic film Intolerance. The Birth of a Nation was cautiously added to to the National Film Registry five years later, its inclusion buffered with a public discussion of the film's problematic agenda.)

Perhaps it is finally time to recognize The Birth of a Nation for what it truly is: a landmark achievement that jolted the American film industry into maturity and forced the public to accept cinema as an art form. It is also time to recognize that, despite the brilliance of its production values, this film established celluloid as a propaganda vehicle which can inspire both the best and the worst in people.

BIRTH OF A FILM

The Birth of a Nation is based on the novel and play The Clansman, by Rev. Thomas A. Dixon, who reportedly suggested the grander, new title to Griffith. Griffith, born ten years after the Civil War, came from a Southern family whose fortunes declined with the demise of the Confederacy. He found his way into the new film business as an actor, taking over behind the camera with a remarkable visual skill that singlehandedly transformed the medium from static photographed plays into living, breathing stories of drama and passion.

Unlike his contemporaries of the period, Griffith saw cinema as a means to espouse his political views. His films The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) and The Mother and the Law (1914) focused respectively on social abuses in urban settings and factories—quite remarkable for a medium generally considered by audiences and industry executives as mere one- and two-reel entertainment. Burning with a need to expand the medium's influence, and jealous of the artistic and commercial success enjoyed by feature-length European imports such as Sarah Bernhardt's Queen Elizabeth (1912) and Italy's Quo Vadis (1913), Griffith turned his cameras on the story of the Civil War and Reconstruction with a decidedly Southern point of view.

What captured the public's attention was the inventive manner in which Griffith spun his melodramatic story of two families, one Northern and one Southern, and how their lives intertwined during the years that the nation was torn by war, then reunited. Contemporary charges that Griffith was reckless with his history are only half right. Few productions have enjoyed such meticulous historical research. Griffith recruited both Union and Confederate veterans to advise him on the sweeping battle sequences, while cinematographer G. W. Bitzer studied the Matthew Brady photographs of that era to ensure on-screen accuracy. Several sequences, such as the Appomattox Treaty and the assassination of Lincoln, were prefixed with title cards assuring audiences they were recreations of photographs and lithographs of the day.

The film also captured a much more realistic view of Southern families than the popular conception of Dixie gentry depicted in Gone with the Wind—after all, very few Southerners actually lived on plantations. Griffith's portrayal of the cruel years of Reconstruction, when the South was literally under military occupation, is one of the few times this sad period in our history was ever captured on film.

However, Griffith's Southern sensibility inevitably polluted the film's vision. In its opening scenes, Griffith decries that the "planting of the seed of disunion" was the result of bringing African slaves to America, strangely placing the blame on those who were brought to this country in chains. If Griffith possessed any outrage against the concept of slavery, it is not visible here. His depiction of the freed slaves is neatly divided into two categories: loyal and loving individuals who stay with their former masters, and idiotic simians who gloat at their newly found freedom and spend most of their time lusting after nubile white women. (Griffith used white actors in very bad black face makeup to portray black characters, which makes the situation all the more unfortunate.) The film's second half hails the creation of the Ku Klux Klan as a means of restoring peace and white supremacy over the chaos of Reconstruction, and Griffith's portrayal of daring KKK commando raids in sheer daylight completely ignores historical fact.

CHEERS AND JEERS

The Birth of a Nation was first screened in New York's Liberty Theatre on March 3, 1915, with an unprecedented admission price of $2.00. Public interest was so overwhelming that President Woodrow Wilson himself requested a private showing, making this the first film ever shown in the White House. (Wilson's claim that the film was "like writing history with lightning, and my one regret is that it is all so terribly true" was reported only by Rev. Dixon's widow and has never been independently verified.)

Virtually overnight, Griffith became a national celebrity. The film industry, shocked by the popular response, switched gears and focused its energies on making films longer and larger. Themes of a political and social nature quickly became commonplace, starting with Griffith's Intolerance, released the following year. The cinema quickly rivaled and then surpassed the theatre in terms of creativity and audience popularity. For a medium which had previously been considered a novelty for lower class audiences, this was an astonishing turn of events.

Then something even more dramatic happened: the motion picture medium in general, and Griffith's work in particular, suddenly became the center of a national debate. Perhaps the most level-headed response was a joint statement by Jane Addams and Lillian Wald, which claimed The Birth of a Nation had been made "too near the period it depicts to be given an audience without danger of inciting hate, hostility, prejudice and sectionalism." Government leaders, educators, essayists, and anyone with access to a typewriter had a comment to make.

The Birth of a Nation immediately accomplished two tasks: it encouraged the rebirth of the long-dormant Ku Klux Klan, a fact which later embarrassed Griffith and shamed the nation, and it also gave birth to the modern civil rights movement. The fate of African-Americans' promise of freedom and a better life following the end of slavery looked bleaker and bleaker in the years following the end of the Civil War. With limited access to political, social and educational equality, America's black population seemed doomed to second-class citizen status.

The Birth of a Nation was the final insult to injury. Outraged African-Americans throughout the country protested the film and tried to have it banned. In Boston, they were denied admission to theatres showing the film, which resulted in riots, and then a massive demonstration at Faneuil Hall demanding that the film be withdrawn. White supporters of this cause, a liberal minority at best, provided legal and moral support, and the media, which at the time was no friend to the notion of civil rights, gave the situation unprecedented coverage. Three years later, a new, all-black filmmaking company responded with a production called The Birth of a Race, which traced the African-American journey from slavery to the present.

Griffith, unprepared for this outpouring, stumbled his way through several responses, first claiming that he was a supporter of civil rights, and then resorting to shrill cries that free speech itself was threatened if his film was censored. In the end, the protests against The Birth of a Nation failed, but the foundation of the civil rights movement was laid, building over the next four decades until Brown v. Board of Education and the Montgomery bus boycotts set the wheels in motion.

While acknowledging the racism that permeates the work, it is wrong to deny The Birth of a Nation its due as a classic. No serious film scholar would ignore Battleship Potemkin because it ends in a Communist victory against Tsarist rule, or shun Triumph of the Will because it celebrates the most evil political doctrine in history. Yet any attempt to offer praise, no matter how faint, for The Birth of a Nation has been met with across-the-board hostility.

With the upcoming 80th anniversary of the film's release, it's time to recognize its importance in the history of American filmmaking. The Birth of a Nation, for better or worse, put the motion picture industry on the map and made cinema the most popular form of cultural expression ever. To focus exclusively on this film's considerable failings is just as wrong as to pretend they do not exist. To recognize The Birth of a Nation for all that it encompasses is to understand the power of cinema and how it can move people in very different ways.