This article is about the 1915 silent film. For other uses, see The Birth of a Nation (disambiguation).
The Birth of a Nation (originally called The Clansman) is a 1915 American silent epic drama film directed and co-produced by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish. The screenplay is adapted from the novel and play The Clansman, both by Thomas Dixon Jr., as well as Dixon's novel The Leopard's Spots. Griffith co-wrote the screenplay with Frank E. Woods, and co-produced the film with Harry Aitken. It was released on February 8, 1915.
The Birth of a Nation is a landmark of film history.[5][6] It was the first 12-reel film ever made and, at three hours, also the longest up to that point.[7] Its plot, part fiction and part history, chronicling the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth and the relationship of two families in the Civil War and Reconstruction eras over the course of several years—the pro-Union (Northern) Stonemans and the pro-Confederacy (Southern) Camerons—was by far the most complex of any movie made up to that date. It was originally presented in two parts separated by another movie innovation, an intermission, and it was the first to have a musical score for an orchestra. It pioneered close-ups, fade-outs, and a carefully-staged battle sequence with hundreds of extras (another first) made to look like thousands.[8] It came with a 13-page "Souvenir Program".[9] It was the first American motion picture to be screened in the White House, viewed there by President Woodrow Wilson.[10]
The film was controversial even before its release and has remained so ever since; it has been called "the most controversial film ever made in the United States".[11]:198 Lincoln, who Dixon saw as a Southerner,[12] was portrayed positively, unusual in a "Lost Cause" environment. But it portrayed black men (many played by white actors in blackface) as unintelligent and sexually aggressive towards white women. It presented the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) as a heroic force.[13][14] There were widespread black protests against The Birth of a Nation, such as in Boston, while thousands of white Bostonians flocked to see the film.[15] The NAACP spearheaded an unsuccessful campaign to ban the film.[15] Griffith's indignation at efforts to censor or ban the film motivated him to produce Intolerance the following year.[16]
It was a huge commercial success and became highly influential, to the point of reinventing the medium. The film's release has also been acknowledged as an inspiration for the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan only months later. In 1992, the Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
In other words, I'm more than "passingly familiar" with that bit of "Silent Cinema".
That is why I recognized the "clip" you posted immediately.