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Mar 14, 2016 · The most ambitious film ever made at the time, The Birth of a Nation was a popular success. African American writer James Weldon Johnson wrote in 1915 that The Birth of a Nation did “incalculable harm” to Black Americans by creating a justification for prejudice, racism, and discrimination for decades to follow.
- Overview
- Production notes and credits
- Cast
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.)
Britannica Quiz
Pop Culture Quiz
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)
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Feb 9, 2010 · Birth of a Nation, based on Thomas Dixon’s novel The Clansman, tells the turbulent story of American history in the 1860s, as it followed the fictional lives of two families from the North and...
- Missy Sullivan
- 3 min
Feb 8, 2015 · The Birth of a Nation is three hours of racist propaganda — starting with the Civil War and ending with the Ku Klux Klan riding in to save the South from black rule during the Reconstruction...
In spite of its divisiveness, The Birth of a Nation was a massive commercial success across the nation—grossing far more than any previous motion picture—and it profoundly influenced both the film industry and American culture.
- $100,000+
- Joseph Carl Breil
- February 8, 1915
- D. W. Griffith, Harry Aitken
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.
Feb 4, 2015 · For The Birth of a Nation is arguably history’s most successful failure, a film whose narrative heights are matched only by its ethical depths. There were no Academy Awards in 1915, but if there had been, The Birth of a Nation would likely have swept every category.
