The Birth of a Nation (1915)

Written by D. W. Griffith & Frank E. Woods

Directed by D. W. Griffith

1998 List Ranking: 44

2007 List Ranking: NA - Removed

WELL. This is certainly one way to start a new list.

I knew going into The Birth of a Nation that this film would be problematic. I had read about it before, and heard that it was incredibly racist, but it was juxtaposed by a litany of technological breakthroughs that have deeply shaped how movies are made today. So it was with a curious hesitancy that I watched this film, and I’m left feeling very…uncomfortable.

The film’s depiction of the assassination of President Lincoln ends the first part of the film

Let’s get the biggest issue out of the way: this film is racist as HELL. Like…it’s really bad. D. W. Griffith presents a world in which Black men lust uncontrollably for White women, where mixed-race people are schemers and opportunists, and the poor White people just HAVE to rise up to claim their rightful place. It’s all incredibly uncomfortable. The film is divided into two halves, the Civil War and the Reconstruction afterwards. The first half of the film is pretty dang racist on it’s own: it takes less than 10 minutes for blackface to make an appearance (and this continues throughout the entire film), and the film falls into the trap of showing slaves being happy in their work before the war begins. Those two things alone would cause me to flag the film as racist, but then the second half begins.

Blackfaced stereotypes

The Reconstruction portion of the film takes the racism of the first half and cranks it beyond what modern audiences (at least, non-racist audiences) could imagine. Black people are completely demonized throughout this portion of the film, as they are shown stuffing ballot boxes and intimidating White people away from voting (in order to get themselves elected to local government), displaying awful stereotypes at almost every turn (dancing instead of working, living off the government, even sitting around in government chambers with their shoe-less feet up on the tables, eating fried chicken). Even worse, the film depicts the Black man’s sole desire as to sleep with White women (regardless of her thoughts on the matter). Indeed, one White woman literally leaps to her death off a cliff in order to avoid being raped by a Black man who wants to “marry” her. It is all so jaw-droppingly repugnant.

The KKK capture Gus, played by white actor Walter Long

All of this, of course, serves to introduce the true “heroes” of the film: the Ku Klux Klan. Yes, you read that correctly: the KKK are the saviors of the film, depicted as the ones sent to save “the South from the tyranny of Black rule”, as one title card states. It should be no surprise, as the book this film is based on is called The Clansmen. There are many things about this film that feel unfortunately timely, but this might be the worst: at the time the film was released, the KKK was basically dead and nonexistent. This film singlehandedly reinvigorated the movement, a movement that has continued to exist to this day. Disgusted by seeing the KKK show up at protests? You can thank this film for that. This film was even, for a time, used as a recruitment tool for new potential KKK members.

Is it clear how disgustingly vile this film is?

So, I’m left with one question: WHY THE HELL IS THIS FILM PART OF THIS LIST?! From what I can understand, it’s due to the large number of technical achievements that D. W. Griffith introduced into this film, ideas and creations that form the cinematic language of Hollywood.

Lillian Gish is attacked in the climax of the film

Except, he didn’t.

In nearly every example in which this film is described as groundbreaking, another film (often, from another country) did it first. Things such as close-ups, cross-cutting between separate action sequences, moving cameras in action sequences, even nuanced acting…all things that The Birth of a Nation gets credit for inventing that all have earlier examples that predate it (and that’s just from what films have survived to today. SO MANY films from the era have been lost to time, so we’ll never be able to see just what new creations in the birth of cinematic language those films hold). Now, I could hear someone saying, “But Chris! Those films were all (mostly/probably) not American! This is the AMERICAN Film Institute! The 123 best AMERICAN films from 100 years!”. And yes, that person would be right. But if The Birth of a Nation didn’t invent them, then still I ask: why is this film here? Because it was the first American film to feature them? I don’t think the sheer amount of racism in the film is enough to counter-balance that.

Ultimately, I could ask many questions about this film (indeed, there are elements (such as the title) that make me somewhat philosophic). However, I don’t think this film justifies that level of discussion. It’s an example of Hollywood white-washing (LITERALLY) the contributions of everyone else that basically wasn’t a White American Male. There is one saving grace, as awful as it is: this film is a clear illustration of the racism that was inherent at the time. Like today, the views expressed here don’t encompass the views of everyone, but looking at the contemporary success of the film, it is clear that the sentiments expressed in the film are not the views of a minority. That is the value of The Birth of a Nation: not to the history of American cinema, but to the history of the American nation. It is disgusting, vile, abhorrent. But it is also a look into the dark underbelly of American history, history that has left a permanent stain on the lives of so many to this day. That awful historical value does not save the film from the lowest possible grade, and it starts this new list off with a disquieting beginning.

FINAL GRADE: F