The Birth of a Nation: influences, peers and legacy

Every connection with its receipt

D. W. Griffith's 1915 epic is inseparable from the Reconstruction-era racist mythology of Thomas Dixon Jr. and from the Italian super-spectacles that showed American producers a feature could run twelve reels. This mix traces the Victorian fiction, Civil War photography and Hollywood-in-formation around it, plus the century of filmmaking made in answer to it.

The Kynda mix for The Birth of a Nation

• Key Influence · The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan by Thomas Dixon Jr. (1905). The direct source: Griffith and Frank E. Woods adapted Dixon's 1905 novel and its hugely successful stage version, keeping the Cameron and Stoneman families, the Reconstruction 'black rule' fantasy and the Klan-as-rescuers climax. Dixon, a North Carolina Baptist minister turned polemicist, brokered the White House screening for his college classmate Woodrow Wilson and pushed the retitling from The Clansman to The Birth of a Nation.
• Influencia Obscura · Photographs of the Civil War (Brady's Album Gallery) by Mathew Brady (1862). Griffith's intertitles advertise 'historical facsimiles,' and the film's battlefield tableaux, Ford's Theatre reconstruction and Appomattox surrender scene were staged after Brady studio plates and Civil War engravings. That documentary alibi — compose the shot to match a known photograph, then let fiction fill the rest — is the film's most insidious device, and the least discussed part of its visual research.
• Local Roots · The Squaw Man by Cecil B. DeMille (1914). Shot in a rented barn at Vine and Selma the year before Griffith filmed his battle scenes in the San Fernando Valley and at Big Bear, DeMille's western is the founding artifact of feature production in Hollywood. Both films came out of the independent revolt against the Patents Company, and both used Southern California's open land and light to make long pictures cheaply enough to gamble on.
• Beyond the Medium · Die Walküre by Richard Wagner (1870). Joseph Carl Breil's compiled score for the film leans on 'Ride of the Valkyries' for the Klan's ride, welding Wagnerian leitmotif technique to screen narrative and helping invent the American film score. The idea of a total work of art — image, orchestra, national myth — is Wagner's, and the roadshow presentation with live orchestra treated the picture as opera rather than nickelodeon fare.
• Peer · The Cheat by Cecil B. DeMille (1915). Released the same year, DeMille's melodrama pushed American cinema toward hard directional lighting and psychological close work while Griffith pushed toward scale and crosscutting. French critics seized on The Cheat as evidence that American film had matured; its racial villainy, played by Sessue Hayakawa, shows the same era's anxieties running through a very different visual style.
• Key Collaborator · The Wind by Victor Sjöström (1928). Gish, Griffith's central star from Biograph through Birth of a Nation and Broken Blossoms, took control of her own projects at MGM and brought Swedish director Sjöström and this Dorothy Scarborough novel to the screen. Shot in the Mojave with airplane propellers driving sand, it is the fullest showcase of the performance style — interior, precise, unsentimental — she developed in Griffith's company.
• Legacy · Within Our Gates by Oscar Micheaux (1920). The oldest surviving feature by an African American director, made as a direct counterstatement: Micheaux inverts Griffith's climax so that the lynch mob and the white assailant are the terror, and Black education and self-determination the cause. Censors in Chicago and elsewhere cut and delayed it, fearing riots. A lost print was recovered in Spain in the 1970s and restored.

What influenced The Birth of a Nation

• The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan by Thomas Dixon Jr. (1905). The film is stated to be based on Dixon’s novel. “It was based on Thomas Dixon Jr. 's 1905 novel The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan” (Wikipedia)
• Mathew Brady. The film's battle scenes drew on Mathew Brady's Civil War photography for visual reference. (also via Photographs of the Civil War (Brady's Album Gallery)) “The film's war scenes were influenced by Robert Underwood Johnson 's book Battles and Leaders of the Civil War , Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War , The Soldier in Our Civil War , and Mathew Brady 's photography.” (Wikipedia)
• Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War. The film's Civil War battle scenes drew on this book as source material. “The film's war scenes were influenced by Robert Underwood Johnson 's book Battles and Leaders of the Civil War , Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War , The Soldier in Our Civil War , and Mathew Brady 's photography.” (Wikipedia)
• The Clansman by Thomas Dixon Jr.. The film's screenplay was directly adapted from Dixon's novel and play. “The screenplay is adapted from Thomas Dixon Jr. 's 1905 novel and play The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan .” (Wikipedia)
• The Leopard's Spots by Thomas Dixon Jr. (1902). The Leopard's Spots (Thomas Dixon Jr.) — culture for The Birth of a Nation “The screenplay is adapted from Thomas Dixon Jr.'s 1905 novel and play The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Die Walküre by Richard Wagner (1870). Die Walküre (Richard Wagner) — culture for The Birth of a Nation “6 by Ludwig van Beethoven, and "Ride of the Valkyries" by Richard Wagner, the latter used as a leitmotif during the ride of the KKK.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• The Fall of Troy by Giovanni Pastrone (1911). The Fall of Troy (Giovanni Pastrone) — ghost for The Birth of a Nation “He worked during the era of the silent film and influenced many important directors in the international cinema with Cabiria, such as David Wark Griffith in The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916).” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Cabiria by Giovanni Pastrone (1914). Cabiria (Giovanni Pastrone) — titan for The Birth of a Nation “He worked during the era of the silent film and influenced many important directors in the international cinema with Cabiria, such as David Wark Griffith in The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916).” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Battles and Leaders of the Civil War by Robert Underwood Johnson. The film's Civil War battle scenes drew on this book as source material. “The film's war scenes were influenced by Robert Underwood Johnson 's book Battles and Leaders of the Civil War , Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War , The Soldier in Our Civil War , and Mathew Brady 's photography.” (Wikipedia)
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (1859). A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens) — titan for The Birth of a Nation (openlibrary.org)
• Uncle Tom's Cabin by Edwin S. Porter (1903). Uncle Tom's Cabin (Edwin S. Porter) — ghost for The Birth of a Nation (themoviedb.org)
• Photographs of the Civil War (Brady's Album Gallery) by Mathew Brady (1862). Photographs of the Civil War (Brady's Album Gallery) (Mathew Brady) — ghost for The Birth of a Nation “The film's war scenes were influenced by Robert Underwood Johnson's book Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War, The Soldier in Our Civil War, and Mathew Brady's photography.” (en.wikipedia.org)

Peers and kindred spirits

• The Wind by Victor Sjöström (1928). The Wind (Victor Sjöström) — collaborator for The Birth of a Nation “Her other major films and performances from the silent era included Intolerance (1916), Broken Blossoms (1919), Way Down East (1920), Orphans of the Storm (1921), The White Sister (1923), La Bohème (1926), and The Wind (1928).” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Civilization by Thomas H. Ince (1916). Civilization (Thomas H. Ince) — peer for The Birth of a Nation “Triangle (so named because from an aerial point of view the property had a triangular shape) was built at 10202 West Washington Boulevard (which became the Ince/Triangle Studios, before becoming Lot 1 of the prestigious MGM Studios, and …” (en.wikipedia.org)
• The Squaw Man by Cecil B. DeMille (1914). The Squaw Man (Cecil B. DeMille) — geography for The Birth of a Nation (themoviedb.org)
• Greed by Erich von Stroheim (1924). Greed (Erich von Stroheim) — collaborator for The Birth of a Nation (themoviedb.org)
• The Cheat by Cecil B. DeMille (1915). The Cheat (Cecil B. DeMille) — peer for The Birth of a Nation (themoviedb.org)
• Tillie's Punctured Romance by Mack Sennett (1914). Tillie's Punctured Romance (Mack Sennett) — geography for The Birth of a Nation (themoviedb.org)

Who The Birth of a Nation influenced

• Within Our Gates by Oscar Micheaux (1920). Within Our Gates (Oscar Micheaux) — legacy for The Birth of a Nation “In 1920, African-American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux released Within Our Gates , a response to The Birth of a Nation .” (Wikipedia)
• John Ford. The Birth of a Nation (D. W. Griffith) — titan for John Ford “In addition to credited roles, he appeared uncredited as a Klansman in D. W. Griffith 's 1915 The Birth of a Nation .” (Wikipedia)
• Gone with the Wind. Gone with the Wind eventually surpassed Birth of a Nation as highest-grossing film, sharing subject matter. “The film was the highest-grossing film until it was overtaken by Gone with the Wind (1939), another film about the Civil War and Reconstruction era.” (Wikipedia)
• Nickelodeon. Nickelodeon incorporates footage from The Birth of a Nation. “The 1976 American comedy film Nickelodeon in part pays homage to silent film makers, and includes footage from The Birth of a Nation .” (Wikipedia)
• Citizen Kane by Orson Welles (1941). Critic Andrew Sarris compared Citizen Kane's influence to that of The Birth of a Nation. “the work that influenced the cinema more profoundly than any American film since The Birth of a Nation .” (Wikipedia)
• BlacKkKlansman by Spike Lee (2018). BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee) — legacy for The Birth of a Nation “Clips from Griffith's film are shown in Robert Zemeckis's Forrest Gump (1994), where the footage is meant to portray the titular character's ancestor and namesake Nathan Bedford Forrest The closing montage of Spike Lee's Bamboozled (2000…” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Rebirth of a Nation. DJ Spooky created a remix of the original film. “Griffith's film was remixed in 2004 as Rebirth of a Nation by DJ Spooky .” (Wikipedia)
• Django Unchained. Tarantino explicitly said he made Django Unchained to counter Birth of a Nation's falsehoods. “Quentin Tarantino has said that he made his film Django Unchained (2012) to counter the falsehoods of The Birth of a Nation .” (Wikipedia)
• The Birth of a Race. The Birth of a Race was made as a direct response to Griffith's film. “In 1918, an American silent drama film directed by John W. Noble called The Birth of a Race was released as a direct response to The Birth of a Nation .” (Wikipedia)
• Akira Kurosawa (1910). The Birth of a Nation (D. W. Griffith) — titan for Akira Kurosawa (themoviedb.org)
• Battleship Potemkin by Sergei Eisenstein (1925). Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein) — legacy for The Birth of a Nation (themoviedb.org)
• The Fall of a Nation. The Fall of a Nation was produced as a sequel to The Birth of a Nation.