BIRTH OF A NATION Movie Review

The Clansman

1915 D.W. Griffith

Long, involving, and poisonously racist, D.W. Griffith's tale of war and reconstruction is the archetypal “flawed masterpiece.” As a landmark of world film, its importance cannot be overstated. It's the first American epic, and it was such a smashing commercial success that it essentially created the film industry as we know it now. That's easy to understand.

Politics and racism not withstanding, the film succeeds as popular entertainment. Griffith created a thumping potboiler of a plot that's been copied many times since, and despite some slow stretches, he ends it with a swiftly paced double conclusion. The protagonists are the Stoneman family of Pennsylvania and the Camerons of Piedmont, South Carolina. Before the war, the sons of both families are friends. Ben Cameron (Henry Walthall) actually falls in love with a photograph of Elsie Stoneman (Lillian Gish) before he meets her. When the war comes, it divides the friends and ironically brings them together in combat and in a hospital. After the war, Austin Stoneman (Ralph Lewis), Elsie's father and a rabid reformer, takes political control of Piedmont and turns things over to the vile mulatto Silas Lynch (George Seigmann). After suffering a host of indignities, insults, and crimes at the hands of the occupying forces, Cameron and the other noble Confederate veterans are forced to form the Ku Klux Klan to protect themselves.

As Cameron puts it in a moment of typically purple oratory, “Brethren, this flag bears the red stain of the life of a Southern woman, a priceless sacrifice on the altar of an outraged civilization.”

Seen today, the film's attempts at political manipulation are laughably blatant, but to leave it at that misses the point. Griffith, son of a Confederate officer who made many dubious claims of heroism, passionately believed in the rightness of his ideas and was hurt by the accusations of racism that were raised in the wake of the film's astonishing popularity. The truth is that Griffith was a product of his times and his values were not uncommon. The film wouldn't have been such a commercial success if it had diverged too far from the mainstream of American culture.

Seen specifically as a war film, Birth of a Nation transformed the way armed conflict was portrayed on screen. Griffith perfected a cinematic language that audiences were just beginning to understand in 1915 and still respond to. The battle scenes—mostly filmed with a combination of high panoramic shots of battlefields and more mobile close-ups of individual action—still hold up. They're ambitious attempts to convey the scope and feel of the fighting, though historical accounts make it clear that this fiction doesn't come close to capturing the massive horrors of that war. Again, the point is that Griffith was the first. Viewers watching the film for the first time will be astonished when they realize how often Griffith has been copied. Several historical “re-creations” are set apart from the fictional narrative and they've aged well. In fact, the techniques that Griffith developed to stretch time and enhance suspense during Lincoln's assassination are still used today. (Unfortunately, Joseph Henabery, the actor playing Lincoln, wears such heavy makeup that he appears to have a box on his head.)

Though some of the acting is a bit fevered, much of it is still effective. Lillian Gish and Henry Walthall are quite good. Griffith's portrayal of his villains is troubling. He uses white actors in blackface to indicate mulattos, and, for the filmmaker, they are the true source of evil. He sees black people with that patronizing, paternalistic condescension so typical of some Southerners, but when races are mixed, he finds true evil and villainy. His attitudes toward war itself are equally contradictory. On one hand, the film claims to be passionately anti-war, to deplore the devastation that armed conflict causes to individuals and the nation. On the other, it celebrates the terrorism of the cowardly Klan. To contemporary audiences, Griffith's attempt to equate the war itself and Klan activities is the most troubling part of the film.

As for the film's historical liberties, Griffith was prescient. He was among the first to demonstrate that in popular filmmaking, you can get away with almost anything if you're entertaining enough, a lesson not lost on Oliver Stone. That entertainment aspect is dated now, but as a milestone of American and world cinema, the film's place in history is undiminished.

Cast: Lillian Gish (Elsie Stoneman), Mae Marsh (Flora Cameron), Henry B. Walthall (Col. Ben Cameron), Ralph Lewis (Austin Stoneman), Robert “Bobbie” Harron (Ted Stoneman), George Siegmann (Silas Lynch), Joseph Henabery (Abraham Lincoln), Spottiswoode Aitken (Dr. Cameron), George Beranger (Wade Cameron), Mary Alden (Lydia Brown), Josephine Crowell (Mrs. Cameron), Elmer Clifton (Phil Stoneman), Walter Long (Gus), Howard Gaye (Gen. Robert E. Lee), Miriam Cooper (Margaret Cameron), John Ford (Klansman), Sam De Grasse (Sen. Sumner), Maxfield Stanley (Duke Cameron), Donald Crisp (Gen. Ulysses S. Grant), Raoul Walsh (John Wilkes Booth), Erich von Stroheim (Man who falls from roof), Eugene Pallette (Union Soldier), Wallace Reid (Jeff, the blacksmith); Written by: D.W. Griffith, Frank E. Woods; Cinematography by: Billy Bitzer; Music by: D.W. Griffith. Producer: D.W. Griffith, Epoch. Awards: American Film Institute (AFI) '98: Top 100, National Film Registry '92. Boxoffice: 3M. Running Time: 175 minutes. Format: VHS, LV, DVD.