The Birth of a Nation is a 1915 American silent film directed by D. W. Griffith, released as the first non serial American film to run twelve reels and among the first American films to carry an orchestral score, and it helped popularize techniques including the close up and the fadeout alongside elaborately staged battle sequences using hundreds of extras made to look like thousands. Its lasting significance is inseparable from its content: its Black characters, largely played by white actors in blackface, are portrayed as unintelligent and sexually aggressive toward white women, and the Ku Klux Klan is depicted as a heroic force. The NAACP led an unsuccessful campaign to have the film banned, riots broke out in Philadelphia and other cities on its release, and a 2023 study found that roadshow screenings of the film were associated with a sharp spike in lynchings.
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Why is The Birth of a Nation called both a landmark and indefensible?
Critics credit it with helping make feature films an industry, and condemn its racist portrayal of Black people and its heroic Klan.
Both judgments come from the same film. In an essay hosted by the Library of Congress, the critic Dave Kehr writes that when it was re-released in 1921 its advertising posters proclaimed it an American Institution, and that it has been one ever since: for better, because it gave birth to the movies as an industry, a cultural force and a social power, and for worse, because it contains perhaps the most virulently racist imagery ever to appear in a motion picture. On the side of praise, he says an industry grounded in one- and two-reelers was transformed within a couple of years into an industry of feature films. On the side of condemnation, he says Griffith's Civil War epic cannot be forgiven for portraying African Americans as sex-crazed animals and the Ku Klux Klan as an army of heroes. He adds that neither can Griffith's great artistry be denied.
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Source The Birth of a Nation (Wikipedia)
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Wikimedia FoundationThe Birth of a Nation, Description, original languageQuote, The Birth of a Nation, Description, original language
The Birth of a Nation is a 1915 American silent film directed by D. W. Griffith, released as the first non serial American film to run twelve reels and among the first American films to carry an orchestral score, and it helped popularize techniques including the close up and the fadeout alongside elaborately staged battle sequences using hundreds of extras made to look like thousands.
The Birth of a Nation (Wikipedia)
Contemporary reception, Criticism section
The NAACP also conducted a public education campaign, publishing articles protesting the film's fabrications and inaccuracies
The Birth of a Nation, Introduction and Social Impact sections
Popular among white audiences nationwide upon its release, the film's success was both a consequence of and a contributor to racial segregation throughout the U.S.
The Birth of a Nation, Introduction section, release date
The Birth of a Nation is a 1915 American silent epic drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish.
Wikipedia: The Birth of a Nation, lead section
The Birth of a Nation is a 1915 American silent epic drama film.
Created By: D.W. Griffith, Infobox: director
D. W. Griffith
In Group: Early American Feature Films, 1913 to 1919, Lead
The Birth of a Nation is a 1915 American silent epic drama film directed by D.
View the SourceOpen Questions (1 open question)
What was the actual box office gross of The Birth of a Nation?
The film's 1915 to 1920s roadshow release predates reliable, centralized box office reporting, and the large early gross figures widely repeated in later popular accounts of the film cannot be traced to a verifiable contemporary source.
What would resolve this A rigorous historical accounting study working from surviving distributor ledgers and regional exhibition records, of the kind film economic historians have not yet completed for this title, could establish a defensible figure or a documented range.
Film economic historyThe Birth of a Nation (Wikipedia)
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