Griffith David Wark - D. W. Griffiths The birth of a nation a history of the most controversial motion picture of all time

D. W. Griffiths
The Birth of a Nation

A History of The Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time

MELVYN STOKES

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stokes, Melvyn.
D. W. Griffiths The birth of a nation : a history of the most
controversial motion picture of all time / Melvyn Stokes.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-19-533678-8; 978-0-19-533679-5 (pbk.)
1. Birth of a nation (Motion picture) I. Title.
PN1997.B55S76 2007
791.43'72dc22 2007022263

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper

Dedicated in loving memory to my parents

Alice Stokes (19061983)
Bernard Stokes (19081988)

and to Nahed and Sarah with love

It is a pleasure to acknowledge the help I have received in writing this book. Much of the research was accomplished with the aid of a research grant from the British Academy. I would like to thank my friends Dawn and Don Clarke for their hospitality in Washington over many years. Almost half the book itself was written during a period of sabbatical leave I spent in Paris. I am very grateful to Franois Weil and Francis Bordat for helping to make this possible. I would also like to thank my friends and colleagues in SERCIA (the Societ dtudes et de Recherches sur le Cinma Anglophone), especially Alain J.-J. Cohen, Raphalle Costa de Beauregard, Gilles Mngaldo, Zeenat Saleh, Dominique Sipire, and Penny Starfield, for listening to perhaps too many papers over the years on The Birth of a Nation. For other opportunities to discuss the film and/or for hospitality they offered, I would like to thank Annie Baron, Trudy Bolter, Christopher Clark, Nicole Cloarec, Alain J.-J. Cohen and Denise Warren, Hlne Le Dantec-Lowry, Richard H. King, Marie Linard, Iwan Morgan, Jacques Portes, Irmengard Rauch, Cornelis A. van Minnen and Sylvia Hilton.

The staff of many libraries have helped greatly toward the writing of this book. I would like to single out especially the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, the British Film Institute Library, the British Library, the Bibliothque Nationale and Bibliothque du Film in Paris, the University College London Library, and the London University Library for their assistance. I would also like to thank my editor at OUP, Shannon McLachlan, her assistant Christina Gibson, who was particularly helpful over the illustrations, and production editor Keith Faivre. Leigh Priest prepared the index with her usual speed and skill.

Many individuals have also made suggestions or answered research questions that helped along the way. I would especially like to thank Robert C. Allen, Bruce E. Baker, Rhiannon Cain, Nancy Cott, Amy M. Davis, Thomas Doherty, Kathryn H. Fuller-Seeley, Jane Gaines, Arlene Hui, Barbara Klinger, Mark Meigs, Adam Smith, Tom Rice, Gregory A. Waller, and Denise Warren. Richard Maltby kindly became the first reader who was not also the writer. He, the three anonymous readers for Oxford University Press, and copyeditor Patterson Lamb have saved me from many errors. Those that remain are all mine.

Finally, on a more personal note, I would like to thank my parents, who first encouraged the idea of a scholarly career. I owe a huge debt also to Nahed and Sarah, who have provided so much support during the eight years it took to research and write this book.

D. W. Griffiths
The Birth of a Nation

In 1915, a movie was released that changed the history of American cinema. Directed by David W. Griffith, it was originally known as The Clansman. Soon after its West Coast premire, however, it was renamed The Birth of a Nation. This film would bring about a revolution in American moviegoing. The Birth of a Nation was the first American film to be twelve reels long and to last around three hours. It was the first to cost $100,000 to produce. It was the first to be shown mainly in regular theaters at the same admission prices of up to $2 that were charged for live performances. It was the first to have a specially compiled musical score to accompany the films exhibition. It was the first movie to be shown at the White House, the first to be projected for judges of the Supreme Court and members of Congress, the first to be viewed by countless millions of ordinary Americans, some of whom had made long journeys to see it, the first to run in so many places for months at a time, the first to attract viewers who returned to see it, sometimes again and again, and the first to have its existence treated as a story in its own right in local newspapers. Although it was not the first motion picture in the United States to be distributed by means of road shows, it was the first to be shown so extensively this way. The men who advertised and publicized it created ways of promoting movies that would soon become standard across the American movie industry. In many ways, in fact, Birth of a Nation was the first blockbuster: it was the most profitable film of its time (and perhaps, adjusted for inflation, of all time), it helped open up new markets (including South America) for American films, and it may eventually have been seen by worldwide audiences of up to 200,000,000.

To understand the impact of The Birth of a Nation, it is necessary to see it in the context of early twentieth-century U.S. cinema. Before Birth was made,

Film critics of 1915 clearly sensed that, in terms of scale and ambition, The Birth of a Nation was very different from earlier American productions. W. Stephen Bush complimented the splendor and magnificence of its spectacles. George D. Proctor hailed it as the greatest picture yet produced. Mr. Griffith, observed Mark Vance, has set such a pace it will take a long time before one [movie] will come along that can top it in point of production, acting, photography, and direction. W., the anonymous reviewer in the New York Dramatic Mirror, said much the same thing when he wrote skeptically that If there is to be a greater picture than The Birth of a Nation, may we live to see it.

Compared to American films produced earlier, it is unsurprising that critics of 1915 should have been impressed by