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Mar 14, 2016 · Perhaps most influential film of that century’s first half, The Birth of a Nation was steeped in the Dunning School’s interpretation of Reconstruction. Based on the novel The Clansman by Thomas Dixon (a university classmate of Woodrow Wilson’s), the three-hour silent film glorified the Ku Klux Klan as the saviors of the South from ...
Feb 8, 2015 · Hulton Archive/ Getty Images. One hundred years ago Sunday, the nascent film industry premiered what would go on to be its first blockbuster: The Birth of a Nation. As the house lights dimmed and ...
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In 1915, fifty years after the end of the Civil War, D. W. Griffith released his epic film Birth of a Nation. The greatest blockbuster of the silent era, Birth of a Nation was seen by an estimated 200 million Americans by 1946. Based on a novel by a Baptist preacher named Thomas Dixon, the film painted Reconstruction, the period following the ...
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- Production notes and credits
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The Birth of a Nation, landmark silent film starring Lillian Gish, released in 1915, that was the first blockbuster Hollywood hit. It was the longest and most-profitable film then produced and the most artistically advanced film of its day. It secured both the future of feature-length films and the reception of film as a serious medium. An epic about the American Civil War (1861–65) and the Reconstruction era that followed, it has long been hailed for its technical and dramatic innovations but condemned for the racism inherent in the script and its positive portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).
(Read Lillian Gish’s 1929 Britannica essay on silent film.)
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Based on the novel The Clansman (1905) by Thomas Dixon, the two-part epic traces the impact of the Civil War on two families: the Stonemans of the North and the Camerons of the South, each on separate sides of the conflict. The first half of the film is set from the outbreak of the war through the assassination of Pres. Abraham Lincoln, and the concluding section deals with the chaos of the Reconstruction period.
Director D.W. Griffith revolutionized the young art of moviemaking with his big-budget ($110,000) and artistically ambitious re-creation of the Civil War years. Shooting on the film began in secrecy in July 1914. Although a script existed, Griffith kept most of the continuity in his head—a remarkable feat considering that the completed film contained 1,544 separate shots at a time when the most-elaborate spectacles, Italian epics such as Cabiria (1914), boasted fewer than 100. Running nearly three hours, The Birth of a Nation was the then longest movie ever released, and its sweeping battle re-creations and large-scale action thrilled audiences. It was also innovative in technique, using special effects, deep-focus photography, jump cuts, and facial close-ups.
•Studio: D.W. Griffith Productions
•Director and producer: D.W. Griffith
•Writers: D.W. Griffith and Frank E. Woods
•Music: Joseph Carl Breil
•Lillian Gish (Elsie Stoneman)
•Mae Marsh (Flora Cameron)
•Henry B. Walthall (Colonel Ben Cameron)
•Miriam Cooper (Margaret Cameron)
•Ralph Lewis (Austin Stoneman)
•George Siegmann (Silas Lynch)
Feb 9, 2010 · On February 8, 1915, D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, a landmark film in the history of cinema, premieres at Clune’s Auditorium in Los Angeles. The film was America’s first feature ...
- Missy Sullivan
- 3 min
Dec 13, 2015 · But, more important, the film needs to be remembered because the scenes in “The Birth of a Nation” from 1915 eerily reflect the deeply troubling realities of race in America in 2015.
Feb 7, 2015 · February 7, 2015 11:38am. The Birth of a Nation Still - H 2015. Courtesy of Photofest. The calendar delivers an invitation to pause and observe — not celebrate — the 100th anniversary of the ...
