Writing a program note for THE BIRTH OF A NATION for the benefit of someone who has never seen it is like trying to give a synopsis of the Bible for someone who has never read it. Even writing a program note for an audience that has seen it is a problem. There can never be such a thing as a "complete program note" on this film. The film needs a complete volume, with whole chapters devoted to specific sequences, to the players involved, and to clearing up the masses of misinformation circulated about this film, for political and other reasons, ever since the film burst like a thunderclap in 1915. To avoid adding complications to an already chaotic field, we won't even mention these errors and deliberate distortions -- except to remark that one of the most blatant of these (Donald Crisp's allegation that he directed the battle scenes) is of course quite absurd, and a claim that Crisp never dared to make while Griffith was still alive to refute it.

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Part Two (and this description is quoted in toto from Seymour Sterns "The Griffith Index") which begins after the sequence of Lincoln's assassination and its effects on the South, traces the exploitation of the newly emancipated Southern negroes by Northern bankers and industrialists ("carpetbaggers") and by political fanatics of both North and South ("scalawags"). It dramatizes the struggle against, and ultimate defeat of, a vengeful movement by these elements to "crush the White South under the heel of the Black South," as a subtitle puts it, and to rule the defeated Southerners through a Northern-controlled economic, political and racial dictatorship. It is the second half of the film, also, which depicts on a tremendous scale the attendant growth, and eventual triumph, of the old Ku Klux Klan, or Invisible Empire (1868-1371). This was the post-bellum secret organisation which saved the Old South from anarchy, and perhaps even from annihilation.

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The Birth of a Nation revolutionised the industry overnight, and brought world-wide respect to the motion picture medium. In America, it was the first film to rate a $2.00 admission fee, being shown in direct competition to the best of the "legitimate" (so-called) stage. In the first six months of its national release, it was seen by more persons than attended all the stage plays in the United States in any given five-year period! The film's tremendous challenge to the stage is covered by Stern in "The Griffith Index":

"First, it opened the frontiers of a new emotional experience to vast masses of people such as the stage, with its physical limitations, and its class, or snob, traditions could not hope to duplicate.

Second, it threatened both the commercial and the creative supremacy of the stage, especially in America. It is vitally important to note what happened here and how it has affected the cinema in our own time... The word "legitimate," as applied to the stage, is a calculated insult to the motion picture. It began to be bandied about - hysterically, and with a trace of desperation - when one Griffith film after another, beginning with The Birth of a Nation in 1915, scored spectacularly successful Broadway runs, and elsewhere, at $2 prices. From there on, as an increasing number of stage-players transferred their careers to the screen, the stage propagandists began yelling that the movies, besides ruining civilization in general, were destroying the stage too. At any rate, it was a convenient alibi for the tired and weak old medium that had long since passed its heyday." (Unquote)

Webster's Dictionary defines that oft-abused term "realism" as "The representation in art and literature of things as they actually are." The definition goes on to explain that realism is a complete opposite of romanticism.

When The Birth of a Nation went into release in 1915, it carried an opening credit (missing from all subsequent prints) in which Griffith expressed the view that none of the standard history books had ever presented an impartial view of the South's role in the American Civil War. (And indeed, they never had - all the history books having been written with a distinctly Northern bias). This film, he said, was to present an accurate and impartial account of that role. In other words, "representation in art of things as they actually are."

Yet if Griffith was a realist, he was also a romanticist with a vengeance! A meticulous historian, he was at the same time a dramatist and a sentimental story-teller. Above all, of course, he was an artist, and it is to his credit that he managed to weld these completely opposed elements into one cohesive whole.

It is of course possible to present on the screen a superficial realism that is far from actual truth, and The Birth of a Nation has been accused of this many times. The fact that a dozen law-suits failed to prove the inaccuracy of Griffith's film by no means put an end to the accusations, which generally sprang from the mistaken belief that Griffith had an anti-Negro streak that resulted in a prejudiced, biased translation of history into filmic terms.

Griffith's own subtitle, that the film was to depict an impartial account of the Southern viewpoint, in itself is some justification for a film which certainly does not show the Negro race in too flattering a light. Griffith himself was a Southerner of the old school, and the events that he was recreating were by no means ancient history. Scarcely half-a-century had gone by since the post-Civil War period, and many veterans of the war worked with Griffith on the picture. If the film appeared to be attacking the Negro at times, it was because, historically and factually, there was some justification for it. Nobody has ever accused Lewis Milestone of being anti-Japanese for making The Purple Heart because it dealt with a contemporary period when it was both fashionable and understandable to dislike the Orientals. Possibly if Griffith had been able to make his film fifty years earlier, during the reconstruction itself, no such accusations would have been flung at him.

As it is, Griffith displayed considerable restraint in controlling natural Southern prejudices, and in being fair to the negro. No such restraints, let it be added, are present in Thomas Dixon's novel The Clansman, a vicious, incredibly bigoted work on which The Birth of a Nation is largely based. One whole chapter is devoted to the Negro's place in American society, with Dr. Cameron exclaiming that "...for a thick-lipped, flat-nosed, spindle-shanked Negro, exuding his nauseous animal odour, to shout in derision over the hearths and homes of white men and women is an atrocity too monstrous for belief." On the question of equality, Cameron states that "we sink to his level if we walk as his equal in physical contact with him. His race is not an infant; it is a degenerate." The whole book is filled with stomach-turning vitriol of this nature, none of which was utilised by Griffith. Indeed, one has a concrete example of Griffith's "toning-down" of racial bias in his handling of the Little Sister's suicide. In the film, Mae Marsh jumps to her death to avoid rape at the hands of an individual Negro, Gus, described as "a product of the vicious doctrines of the white carpet-baggers." In the novel, the girl and her mother, already assaulted by an organised group of Negroes led by Gus, later commit suicide together because of "the shame that neither they nor the world can forget." All that Griffith used of this ugly chapter is the final sentence "Hand in hand they stepped from the cliff into the mists and on through the opal gates of Death" - which he translated into the title "For her who had learned the stern lesson of honor, we should not grieve that she found sweeter the opal gates of death."

The reconstruction period in the South was a period of terror and tyranny, but it is difficult to accuse Griffith of a distortion of reality when confronted by historical fact. If the film seems to exaggerate Negro domination, one has only to look at the powerful scene wherein Griffith recreates the House of Representatives general session of 1871 in South Carolina, when the division of seats had 23 whites ("the helpless white minority") opposed by 101 Negroes. All such documentary reconstructions as these - and the film abounds in them - are based on authenticated records and the works of reliable historians. Griffith's own subtitles credit the source material, and one of the most oft-used reference books is Woodrow Wilson's The History of the American People.

One of the weakest thrusts made at Griffith's alleged racial bias is his use of white actors in Negro roles, the assumption being that prejudice prevented his hiring Negroes for prominent roles. This accusation is easily disposed of, and boils down to a simple matter of economics, Griffith's production methods, and the fact that in 1915 there were only a few obscure Negro actors performing in films. To save costs, Griffith frequently used the same actors in a number of roles. With makeup, whites could convincingly play Negroes - but obviously the procedure could not be reversed. Thus, Walter Long who appeared in the guerilla raid on Piedmont as the "scalawag white captain" later became Gus, the renegade; and following his death on the battlefield as a Union soldier, Robert Harron re-emerged as one of the Negroes sent to arrest Dr. Cameron. In minor roles, many Negroes do appear in the film. Some years ago, a British writer (Peter Noble) dragged this whole issue out into the sunlight again in Sight and Sound and in the following issue had his theories and claims torn to shreds by Seymour Stern. Griffith himself joined in the fray, still in a fighting mood and in belligerent defense and full justification of his film, wrote his reply on the 12th of February - Lincoln's birthday!

It is a sorry thing that while The Birth of a Nation which, at worst, projects an emphatically Southern viewpoint, has constantly been accused of bigotry and distortion, scarcely a finger has been raised (excluding censorship hassles) against Eisenstein's Potemkin. Great film though it unquestionably is, it was nevertheless designed as a propaganda film. Not only is it biased in the extreme, but its historical facts are blatantly inaccurate. The fact that the issues of The Birth of a Nation have remained of more urgency than those of Potemkin is a feeble excuse for such continued victimization.

The claims to realism of The Birth of a Nation are obviously primarily in the purely historical sections - the magnificent battle panoramas, the supremely well handled assassination of Lincoln, the lucid covering of the franchise for Negroes, the passing of new bills by the House of Representatives, and so on. It would be possible (and not too difficult) to edit all the personal elements out of The Birth of a Nation and to be left with a remarkable and concise documentary history of an era, from Lincoln's first call for volunteers through to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. Certainly no film before - or since (even from Griffith himself) - can lay claim to such meticulous historical reconstruction. Screen realism certainly was not created either by Griffith or by The Birth of a Nation. (Earlier one had had promising examples of social realism in little gems like Edwin S. Porter's The Kleptomaniac, as well as Griffith's own A Corner in Wheat, and of near-documentary realism in the historical reconstructions of Griffith, Ince and Edison). But certainly the documentary-reconstruction school of realism was raised to remarkable new heights in the purely historical sections of The Birth of a Nation, aided to a large degree by Griffith's constant reliance on authenticated evidence and in particular the Civil War photographs of Mathew Brady. And while Griffith let the more florid side of his nature have its head in the purely sentimental and romantic sequences, these certainly would not stand the test of time as well - and as convincingly - as they do, had not definite, if somewhat intangible, elements of realism crept into them. One of the foremost of these elements was certainly Griffith's concern for incidental detail which in itself might seen insignificant and even superfluous, but which had a definite and important place in the mosaic of the whole. How much more we knew, instantly, about the character of "the kindly master of Cameron Hall" due to the camera casually and unobtrusively panning to show us Walthall's hand caressing a puppy, before it moves on to the more essential scene introducing Robert Harron. Such typically Griffithian sentimentalities as the mother's "appeal to the Great Heart" and the strangely unexplained sentence of death passed on the Little Colonel, are the easier to take because they are set against utterly convincing backgrounds - the business-like office of Lincoln, and the crowded hospital room with its background of patients, doctors, harassed clerks and bored sentries. How delighted D.W. must have been when he read in Dixon's book the section where Lincoln pardons the wounded Cameron. It is an unrestrainedly sentimental scene (and one that Griffith repeated to a large degree in his interesting talkie, Abraham Lincoln) but thanks to the reality of the surrounding context, it never becomes cloying or maudlin.

Looking at The Birth of a Nation today, it is almost frightening to think what might have happened to the American cinema had it not been for Griffith. Today, unfortunately, it seems to be the fashion among the slick critics and arty writers (many of whom have never bothered to see the films they write about) to consider Griffith quaint and out-of-date. They may pay lip service to his innovations - but to his films, never. Yet even apart from the films themselves, the debt to Griffith is immeasurable. Certainly most of the great innovations came from him, as did the aura of respect which grudgingly settled on the cinema after The Birth of a Nation. The first really great American film not made by Griffith was 1924's Greed -- made by Stroheim, a pupil of Griffith who repeatedly referred to D.W. as his teacher. Many of the other great directors of the early American cinema learned their trade from him, either directly or indirectly. (Mack Sennett, in his autobiography, re-stresses this great directorial debt). Eisenstein and other Russian directors so freely acknowledged that D.W. was, in essence, their teacher, that he was at one tine invited to take over complete guidance of the Russian film industry.

It was inevitable that The Birth of a Nation should be of tremendous influence on the silent American cinema, and indeed on the silent cinema generally. Several shots in Eisenstein's Ten Days That Shook the World can be traced directly to The Birth of a Nation (and to Intolerance), and Griffith himself of course, continued to be influenced by his own creation - as witness America, screened by this society last July. Perhaps not inevitable, but nevertheless notable, was the influence that the film had on the American sound film too -- especially in certain films by John Ford, John Huston and especially Raoul Walsh, who had of course worked in The Birth of a Nation for Griffith. Even a routine and otherwise undistinguished film like Go For Broke, an MGM war film of the early fifties, patterned one of its battle scenes quite recognisably on Griffith's beautifully composed episode of Sherman's march to the sea.

Certainly, in 1915, The Birth of a Nation was political and filmic dynamite. It still is. Indeed, what film of today can claim any kind of dynamite filmic, political, or otherwise?

Our print is in fine condition, and, other than one or two titles which seem to be a few frames out of place, is the same as the original release prints for the most part. The only differences: the addition of a cast-list (added for a reissue in the 20's) and the deletion of about half-a-reel of footage which Griffith himself agreed to following the initial showings in 1915. The three odd reels of footage that were deleted for the abominable "sound version" are all present and correct in this version!

Finally, for those who have not already done so, we recommend a thorough perusal of "The Griffith Index" by Seymour Stern, which covers, in excellent detail, every possible phase of the film's background, production, distribution and reception. Also well worth reading is Stern's "Monograph to The Birth of a Nation," an extension of the Index, which contains very colorful coverage of the classic stage-vs-screen battles between Stern and Walter Prichard Eaton in the thirties.

As a closing comment, we should add that The Birth of a Nation is perhaps the classic example of an aesthetic and critical triumph that has also been a huge box-office success. It is estimated that through the years it has grossed in excess of fifty million dollars.