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{{quote|''"Classic or not, ''Birth of a Nation'' has long been one of the embarrassments of film scholarship. It can't be ignored ... and yet it was regarded as outrageously racist even at a time when racism was hardly a household word.''"
|'''Andrew Sarris'''}}
{{quote|"Despite Birth's blatant glorification of the KKK and depiction of black Americans as wild animals, this movie still ... nope, we're not finishing that sentence. On one hand, it pioneered concepts like actually moving the cameras and using rapid cuts, and you're probably still seeing its influence in movies today. On the other hand, ''everything else about it.''"
|'''[[Cracked.com]]'''|[http://www.cracked.com/article_19826_6-iconic-scenes-ripped-off-from-lesser-known-movies_p2.html 6 Iconic Scenes Ripped Off From Lesser Known Movies]}}
A 1915 silent movie directed by [[D. W. Griffith]], starring famous silent film actress [[Lillian Gish]],
The plot of ''The Birth of a Nation'' is a two-part chronicle of American history. The first part depicts the nation before, during, and after [[The American Civil War]], from the perspective of two juxtaposed families - the Northern Stonemans, who are abolitionists and federalists, and the Southern Camerons, who are secessionists. When war breaks out, the houses must send their sons off to their respective opposing armies. The Camerons suffer many hardships in the war torn and depleted South, and must deal with hunger, ransackers, looters, and rapists. Eventually, the Union army crushes the Confederacy, ending the war. President Abraham Lincoln promises to rebuild the South, in spite of protests from vengeful Northern politicians who would execute its leaders and treat the land as conquered territory. But Abraham Lincoln is assassinated at Ford's Theater, allowing the Radical Republicans, led by Austin Stoneman, to gain strength and support for inflicting punitive measures on the South for their rebellion.
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Being one of the first feature films ever, The Birth of a Nation introduced, refined, and popularized zillions of tropes, and is considered one of the most groundbreaking films ever. But it is also extremely controversial - its view of Reconstruction is one that promotes white supremacy and that glorifies the KKK. Not surprisingly, one of President [[Woodrow Wilson]]'s favorite films (Wilson segregated the Navy and introduced Jim Crow laws to Washington, DC). Even he had to distance himself from his praise of the film eventually, though.
''The Birth of a Nation'' was added to the [[National Film Registry]] in 1992 - the same year that the counterbalancing ''[[Within Our Gates]]'' was added to the Registry and three years after Griffith's later work ''[[Intolerance]]'' was listed.
This film is in the public domain and can be viewed in its entirety at [http://www.youtube.com/movie?v=FbYXF5HmEds Youtube].▼
▲This film is in the public domain and can be viewed in its entirety at [http://www.youtube.com/movie?v=FbYXF5HmEds Youtube], or [[{{PAGENAME}}/Source|here on this very wiki]].
* [[Adaptation Distillation]]: ▼
* [[All Is Well That Ends Well]]: Though whether it ends well or not depends a lot on your perspective▼
Normally, we'd say "Not to be confused with [[The Birth of a Nation (2016 film)|the 2016 movie of the same name]]", but in this case the later movie makes a good corrective for the earlier one.
* [[Beauty Equals Goodness]]: Especially prevalent in the novel. All the heroes are beautiful, all the villains (except for Lydia Brown) are hideous. ▼
* [[Better to Die Than Be Killed]]: Flora Cameron jumps off a cliff rather than be raped --sort of, see below-- by a freed slave▼
{{tropelist}}
▲* [[
▲* [[Beauty Equals Goodness]]: Especially prevalent in the novel. All the heroes are beautiful, all the villains (except for Lydia Brown) are hideous.
▲* [[Better to Die Than Be Killed]]: Flora Cameron jumps off a cliff rather than be raped --
* [[Big Damn Heroes]]
* [[Bindle Stick]]: Justified. Carpetbaggers really did carry these.
* [[Black and White Morality]]: Literally. In the Reconstruction chapter, the villains are vengeful, scheming, manipulative, corrupt politicians who use freed slaves and militia to terrorize the former Southern aristocracy. The heroes, the KKK are [[Knight in Shining Armor|Knights in Shining Armour]]. People don't consider this film racist for nothing.
* [[Blackface]]: Unsurprisingly, there were few black actors who played the black roles in this film. The rest were filled in by white actors wearing ''glaringly'' obvious makeup. (Even in its racist heyday, blackface makeup was supposed to create a clownish caricature that no one would believe was a real black person; Griffith must not have thought much of his audience's powers of perception.)
** In truth, the would-be rapist comes across less as a truly black man than as an unwashed (white) coal miner.
* [[Bound and Gagged]]: A [[Damsel in Distress|white woman]], of course.
* [[Bowdlerise]]: In the original novel, Gus succeeds in raping [[I Let Gwen Stacy Die|Marion Lenoir]], Ben's childhood sweetheart.
* [[Capulet Counterpart]]: Elsie and Phil Stoneman.
* [[Category Traitor]]: The radical republicans are implied to have betrayed the white race, especially with Stoneman himself having an extramarital affair with a black woman - leading him to give power to the evil mulatto who later try to rape his daughter.
* [[The Cavalry]]: Every single shot of cavalry riding to the rescue in every western, ever, is merely a copy of one of the zillion shots of the Klan riding to the rescue in this film.
* [[Changed My Mind, Kid]]
* [[Closeup on Head]]
* [[Continuity Editing]]: D.W. Griffith practically '''defined''' continuity editing with movies like this.
* [[Dead Little Sister]]: Flora for Ben.
* [[Defiled Forever]]
* [[Did Not Do the Research]]: Griffith later claimed that he hadn't realized that the books he used as the basis for the story were racist whitewashings of history. Whether this is true or not, his next film, the anti-racist epic ''[[Intolerance]]'', is widely accepted to have been made as [[The Atoner|Griffith's attempt at an apology]].
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* [[Epic Movie]]: Probably [[Ur Example|the first ever]].
* [[Evil Cripple]]: Austin Stoneman.
* [[Fair for Its Day]]: Invoked in the intro to the second part, but fails into aversion. Even during the "[[wikipedia:Nadir of American race relations|Nadir of American race relations]]" it was considered racist.
* [[Fictional Counterpart]]: Austin Stoneman is a stand-in for Thaddeus Stevens, a Radical Republican leader.
* [[Framed Subject]]
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* [[Golden Mean Fallacy]]: This movie tries so desperately to be neutral that it become monstrous. Siding neither with slavery nor with the "extremists" who want actual race equality, it supports the "neutral middle ground" of Jim Crow laws. The filmmakers seem to have thought that making Lincoln a sympathetic character and including a [[Never Mess with Granny|ass-kicking black heroine]] weighs up making the Ku Klux Klan heroes of the story.
* [[Grievous Harm with a Body]]: One of the Ku-Kluxers clobbers several black guys with one of their friends. The way the man being swung as a club flops about indicates that Senator Stoneman isn't the only [[Straw Character|straw man]] in this film.
* [[Hair of Gold]]: Phil and Elsie in the book.
* [[Hollywood Night]]
* [[An Insert]]: Pretty much required in silent movies with sophisticated plots.
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* [[In-Universe Camera]]
* [[Light Is Not Good]]: Inverted; the KKK are the heroes in the film's climax, though they still come across to modern viewers as pretty rotten.
* [[Love At First Sight]]: For both of our couples.
* [[Male Gaze]]: A Union hospital guard takes a long look at Gish after she passes by him to visit her convalescing boyfriend.
* [[Melodrama]]: Especially in the second half.
* [[Never Mess with Granny]]: In ''[[The Birth of a Nation]]'', we have an overweight elderly housekeeper leap into action and save her employer, knocking down at least one ruffian and two soldiers in the process. Interesting for a white supremacist racist work, the heroine is black and the man she's saving is white.
* [[Ojou]]: Elsie and the Cameron sisters, at least at first.
* [[Poirot Speak]]: "Dem free-niggers f'um de N'of um so' crazy".
* [[Police Are Useless]]: Justified in that the Radical Republicans, more or less, own the police.
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[[Category:Roger Ebert Great Movies List]]
[[Category:National Film Registry]]
[[Category:Early Films]]▼
[[Category:Epic Movie]]
[[Category:School Study Media]]
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[[Category:Film]]
[[Category:Films of the 1910s]]
[[Category:Pages with working Wikipedia tabs]]
[[Category:Public Domain Feature Films]]
[[Category:Black-and-white films]]
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