History in
The Birth of a Nation,
D. W. Griffith.

Leticia Vázquez Soriano
Literatura y cine en países de habla inglesa: interrelación semiótica y narrativa
18th January, 2012
Curso 2011-2012

Index
Introduction........................................................ pp. 1
Historical filmic context...................................... pp. 3
History in the film............................................... pp. 4 Use of intertitles...................................... pp. 5 Free interpretation of facts..................... pp. 7 Fiction mixed with reality........................ pp. 8
The film as history............................................... pp. 10 An autonomous language........................ pp. 10 Critical reception......................................pp. 14
The cinema: a mass spectacle.................. pp. 15
Bibliography......................................................... pp. 17

Introduction
In this essay I am going to talk about history in The Birth of a Nation by David Wark Griffith. By “history” I mean: the historical filmic context of the film, which was released in 1915. I am going to show how history is represented in the film. We can see some facts that may have been changed in some aspects in order to guide our minds to what the director want us to think. We also find, as a method to support this, the introduction of fictional characters in some much known historical events of the United States. To end with, I am going to explain why this film is so important, including the technical improvements that are represented here.
D. W. Griffith
David Walk Griffith was born in Oldham County, Kentucky, on 22nd January, 1875. Griffith attempted to become a writer but only managed to have one of his plays performed.

In 1907 Griffith moved to Hollywood and tried to sell a script to a movie producer, Edwin S. Porter. He rejected the script but gave him a part in a film he was making. After appearing in Rescued from an Eagle's Nest (1907) he managed to find work as a director with the Biograph Company. Over the next six years our director made over 400 films. He wanted to make feature-length films but when this idea was rejected he left the Biograph Company and immediately began work on Birth of a Nation (1915). The film created a sensation. Griffith's use of intricate editing and film techniques were revolutionary and inspired a generation of directors. The film's portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan and African Americans resulted in Griffith being accused of racism. Despite attempts by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to have the film banned, it was highly successful at the box office.
Deeply hurt by the accusations of racism, his next film, Intolerance (1916), was a quartet of stories of man's inhumanity to man. Griffith's attempt to compensate for the politics of the Birth of a Nation was a commercial flop. The film left him heavily in debt and over the next few years desperately attempted to make films that would enable him to pay off his creditors.
In 1919 Griffith joined with Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks to form the United Artists, a company that enabled the stars to distribute their films without studio interference. Griffith made two sound films, Abraham Lincoln (1930) and The Struggle (1931. The films were not successful and Griffith retired from the cinema, spending the last ten years of his life living alone in Hollywood's Knickerbocker Hotel. He died on 23rd July, 1948. Advert of the movie
Based on Thomas Dixon's 1905 novel The Clansman, The Birth of a Nation begins as the South marches into battle to defend a way of life the North wants to eradicate. The second half finds a defeated South at the mercy of Northern carpetbaggers, vengeful Union politicians, and easily manipulated freed slaves. All that remains of the South's honor during Reconstruction is its virtuous women. Once this honor is threatened (by a "renegade negro"), the Ku Klux Klan is born, imposing order on chaos and releasing Southern whites from "under the heel" of blacks.
The film was a big commercial success, but was highly controversial owing to its portrayal of African American men (played by white actors in blackface) as unintelligent and sexually aggressive towards white women, and the portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan (whose original founding is dramatized) as a heroic force. There were widespread protests against The Birth of a Nation, and it was banned in several cities. The film is also credited as one of the events which inspired the formation of the "second era" Ku Klux Klan at Stone Mountain, Georgia in the same year.

Historical filmic context
Since no practical method was devised until 1923, marrying the image with synchronous sound was no possible. Thus, for the first thirty years of their history, films were silent, although accompanied by live musicians and sometimes sound effects. However, in most countries the need for spoken accompaniment quickly faded, with dialogue and narration presented in intertitles. The first eleven years of motion pictures, since 1895, show the cinema moving from a novelty to an established large-scale entertainment industry. The films represent a movement from films consisting of one shot, completely made by one person with a few assistants, towards films several minutes long consisting of several shots, which were made by large companies in something like industrial conditions. At first, film were mostly shown as a novelty in special venues, but the main methods of exhibition quickly became either as an item on the programmes of variety theatres, or by travelling showman in tent theatres, which they took around the fairs in country towns. It became the practice for the producing companies to sell prints outright to the exhibitors, at so much per foot, regardless of the subject.
The first film cameras were fixed to a tripod or another support having, as a result, only the levelling devices’ movements. But, in 1896 the camera was mounted on a vehicle, which result was the first camera movement. In 1897, it was created the pan, this consists on having the camera mounted on a vertical axis that could be rotated by a worm gear driven by turning a crank handle. In this year as well, it was the first time someone played with the lighting. The method consisted on putting thin cotton cloths on a gall ceiling and walls.
In 1900, continuity of action across successive shots was definitely established. In that year it was made Seen Though the Telescope, in which we can find a street scene with a young man tying the shoelace and then caressing the foot of his girlfriend, while an old man observes this through a telescope. There is then a cut to close shot of the hands on the girl's foot shown inside a black circular mask, and then a cut back to the continuation of the original scene.
During the next years, until 1914, the film business increased. This means that there were more small cinemas and places that only show films, and some larger cinemas in big cities. The rising of the cinema industry also helped other countries to join to this activity; besides Britain, France and the United States, now there is filmic production in Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Russia and Germany.
Around 1910, films started to be longer, needing more than one reel. But this was restricted only to film versions of the life of Christ. This soon changed and there were films of more than one reel showing different themes.
From these dates on, artificial light was used more and more in the film studios to supplement diffuse sunlight, and so increase the hours that film could be shot during the day. Low-key lighting (lighting in which most of the frame is dark) slowly began to be used for sinister scenes. This sort of lighting was appearing occasionally in European films by 1911, and in some cases was pushed much further.
In France, in 1907, film directors started using a new technique: cross-cutting. In the United States this was also used in suspense scenes in the same dates. Before D.W. Griffith started directing at Biograph in May 1908, he had seen several films with this new shot. But Griffith's first use of cross-cutting in The Fatal Hour, made in July 1908, has a much stronger suspense story served by this construction than those in the films he used as examples.
An even more important development was the use of the Point of View shot. Previously, these had only been used to convey the idea of what someone in the film was seeing through a telescope (or other aperture), and this was indicated by having a black circular mask or vignette within the film frame. The true Point of View (POV) shot, in which a shot of someone looking at something is followed by a cut to a shot taken from their position without any mask, took longer to appear: at the end of 1910.
Intertitles containing lines of dialogue began to be used consistently from 1908 onwards. From 1909 on, a small number of American films, and even one or two European ones, came to include a few dialogue titles. Film-makers slowly progressed from putting them before the scene in which they were spoken, to cutting them into the middle of the shot at the point at which they were understood to be actually spoken by the characters, and then left with a cut to the character just before they finish speaking. This was effectively the equivalent of a present-day sound film. Hardly any of the films where this happened were D.W. Griffith films, and indeed many of his 1913 films still contain no dialogue titles at all. Although some European film-makers picked up the trend, they did not pick up on the move towards cutting them into the scene at the point at which they were actually spoken until a few years later. The introduction of dialogue titles entirely transformed the nature of film narrative.

History in the film
This film is set in the Civil War that took place in America between 1861 and 1865. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ("the Confederacy"); the other 25 states supported the federal government ("the Union"). After four years of warfare, mostly within the Southern states, the Confederacy surrendered and slavery was outlawed everywhere in the nation. Issues that led to war were partially resolved in the Reconstruction Era that followed, though others remained unresolved.
Griffith had a point of view; he is in the ideological conservative vision of the Victorian era, the world view of the universe recalcitrant and reactionary bourgeois nineteenth century and he was us to think like him.
In order to get this, he made all that he could to show the circumstances of the film as if they were true, as if happened just in the way we could see in the screen. I want to make clear that nobody knows what really happened; it is obvious that some scenes are not true or faithful, but there are others that could have happened as Griffith shows us. I don’t mean that he is a liar or an impostor; he just wanted something that we all know: to convince the audience that what he thought was the right thing.
Griffith used several different techniques to get this.

Use of intertitles
Griffith uses a series of intertitles to introduce some scenes and in other to show some dialogues. The intertitles he uses, those that are not dialogues, are of very different nature. Some of them are short descriptions of what is going on, other are “Historical facsimiles” taken from different historical books. This historical facsimile makes the film more veritable and as we are moving on through the plot, we are more and more convinced that what is taking place in the screen is true.
There are intertitles where we can read true thing like places, dates and names that Griffith knew his spectators would know and recognize as part of their history. Some examples of this are:
“The power of sovereign states, established when Lord Cornwallis surrendered to the individual colonies in 1781, is threatened by the new administration”
“The fist flag of the Confederacy baptized in glory at Bull Run”
Intertitle that contains a “Historical facsimile”
“’And then, when the terrible days were over and a healing time of peace was at hand’... came the fated night of April 14, 1865” (making reference to the night that Lincoln was murdered)
“A gala performance to celebrate the surrender of Lee, attended by the President and staff” AN HISTORICAL FACSIMILE
This kind of facsimiles have the function to prove that what it is happening in the film is true, that the director didn’t change the circumstances, that things took place in that way. Once the spectators are sure of Griffith honesty, they would believe all that he had to tell them.
At this point we can find other kind of intertitles:
“The Radical leader’s protest against Lincoln’s policy of clemency for the South”
“Excerpts from Woodrow Wilson’s “history of the American People: in the villages the negroes were the office holders, men who knew none of the uses of authority, except its insolence... put the white South under the heel of the black South...the white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation... until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country”
“The uncrowned king”
“The election day, all blacks are given the ballot, while the leading whites are disfranchised”
In these intertitles we can read how Griffith rants against the black people and those who defend them. They are shown as animals without the capacity of reason like a white man. They wanted to submit the white South without any knowledge of how to rule themselves, and what it is worse, without any natural right to do it.
There is a third kind of intertitles where Griffith praises and shields black slaves who know where their place is, slaves that are happy of being slaves and have the condition they have. He also lauds the whites that knew that what the North wanted was not right and fight against them, even if this causes their life.
“The union veterans refuse to allow Dr. Cameron to give himself up”
“The faithful soul enlists Dr. Cameron’s sympathy”
“The KKK, the organization that saved the South from the anarchy of black rule, but not without the shedding of more blood than at Gettysburg, according to Judge Tourgee of carpet-baggers”
“For her who had learned the stern of honor we should not grieve that she found sweeter the opal gates of death”

Free interpretation of facts
By this I mean that there are some scenes which our director may had have interpreted in the most convenient way to show his point of view and to make us see what he wanted us to see. It seems that he exaggerate some actions or avoid some things to prove that black people had a primitive behavior and they shouldn’t have never been freed from slavery.
So as not to break the order that was established, I am going to start explaining this point giving some examples that have intertitles where we can find these free interpretations.
“The speaker rules that the members must wear shoes”
“The helpless white minority”
“Passage of a bill, providing the intermarriage of black and whites”
Black men at the Master Hall eating and in bare feet.
All these quotes were taken from the same part of the plot: A scene set in the South Carolina legislature in the early 1870s, which depicts newly elected black legislators lolling in their chairs, their feet bare, eating chicken and drinking whiskey. Meanwhile, a few white members, sat down quietly and surrounded by these “savages”, are shown as a vulnerable group that can do nothing to stop what is going on. After this, some white visitors came to see how the Master Hall works. There are some families where we can see young ladies. In the next shot we can see how the black members observe these girls with obscene and lascivious eyes. The message is clear: they want our women.
And it seems that they are going to have them if they want. Actually, the reason why the youngest of the Cameron sister dies is because she is followed by a black soldier that wants to marry her and she doesn’t. Another similar example is the Stoneman’s scene where Lynch wants to marry the daughter and when he asks permission to Austin Stoneman, he immediately refuses to accept that madness. These situations were unbelievable before the Civil War, and Griffith uses them to transmit fear.
Another example of this representation of circumstances takes place in the first part of the film, when Lincoln signs the proclamation. Lincoln is showed with some regret of what he have just done, probably hoping there was another way to achieve what he wanted and think it was fair. This is presumably because he is one of the most known and beloved characters of the Unites States history and Griffith didn’t wanted to contaminate this memorable figure and, therefore, have all the country against him.
The repentance of Lincoln
So, contrary to what one might expect from a pro-Southern telling of the Civil War Lincoln is portrayed with respect, associating him with near-divine goodness and gravity. The film’s characters treat Lincoln almost as a Christ figure. Mrs. Cameron, for example, appeals to him to save her son’s life. Congressional representatives who meet with Lincoln always agree with him and treat him with reverence, with Austin Stoneman as the lone exception. In the five days between Lee’s surrender to Grant and Lincoln’s assassination, the South begins to rebuild itself with hope and dignity. Southerners react to his assassination as if it was their end as well, and as soon as Lincoln dies, criminals from the North immediately overrun the South.
A third scene where we can see this free representation and interpretation is that one that occurs on the Election Day. Once the black people have right to vote, they are presented as cheaters. We can see how some of them are sat on a table controlling the votes that came in and not allowing white people exercise their right to vote. In the next scene we can see how Lynch, the mulatto that leaderships the black party, wins the elections thanks to his particular method.
To finish with this point, I would like to say that the whole film has some class of mask on it, showing only what it wants to show about the Civil War. It never addresses the real reason why this war took place. The one key point is that it was not fought for humanitarian reasons- to abolish slavery and achieve racial equality- but on economical backgrounds. The Civil War was a result of growing scheme between the industrializing and capitalist North and the agrarian and feudal South. During the 19th Century most parts of the Western world had abolished slavery. The United States South was one of the last places to abolish slavery. Slavery was legal from the constitution of 1789 to the 13th amendment which abolished it in 1865. President Abraham Lincoln went to War for the political reason of keeping the union together and the economic purpose of allowing free trade capitalism to expand. We must keep in mind that if they were slaves, they could not have any money and, as direct consequence, they were not able to buy anything and follow the new system.

Fiction mixed with reality
The last method used in The Birth of a Nation to make the story more real that I am going to analyze here is the mix that exists between fiction and reality all along the film. This blending happens in a lot of situations and scenes.
A Stoneman in the Civil War
To begin with I am going to talk about the most general of all of them, which is the participation of the two families in such an important and relevant fact that is the Civil War. We see that in both sides there are members of one family or another providing even the tiniest thing to their cause. On the one hand, there is the Cameron family. This house is composed by three men and two women. The three brothers went to war, and one of them was even a Colonel, while the sisters stayed at home and helped, with their mother, giving their clothes to earn some money for the soldiers. On the other hand we have the Stoneman house, composed by two brothers and a sister. The young men went to war and the lady assistance to the hurt ones. So we have nine people that took part on this war, nine fictitious characters that have some role, more or less important, in such a significant event.
Secondly, I must mention the fact that there are fictional characters that meet and work with one of the most known historical figure of United States history: Lincoln. We see this intersection between the two words in different occasions.
Austin Stoneman, the householder of the Northern family, has a close relationship with the President of the States. They are member of the same party and go together to the meetings. Actually, Stoneman seems to be the second in command as he is the party’s leader after Lincoln’s dead.
There is another member of the Stoneman family that meets the president, this is Elsie. Once she starts being a nurse during the war, she found out that the Colonel Ben Cameron has been hurt as is going to be treated as a war prisoner. In order to avoid this, Elsie and Ben’s mother arrange a meeting with Lincoln to pray for mercy for the eldest Cameron son. Lincoln decides to free him, showing a benevolent heart.
The young couple on the tragic night
The last situation in which we see Lincoln with made-up personages is in the scene that represents his death. This scene is introduced by intertitles with an “historical facsimile”. We can see that everything is going on as it really happened: Abraham Lincoln will be shot by Booth at the gala performance. The fictional characters, which are Elsie Stoneman and Ben Cameron, here, have a witness role. The death of the President is something that cannot be changed, so they cannot avoided it, they cannot interfere. The only thing that Griffith could do to make us think that all that was happening it truly happened, is to use the young couple as inevitable witnesses.
Ben Cameron as part of the Ku Klux Klan
To continue with this point, I will talk about the imaginary characters taking part in the Ku Klux Klan. First of all, there is scene in which one of the film’s white Southern heroes –Ben Cameron- witnesses a group of white children donning white bed sheets, inadvertently scaring several black children playing nearby. This view provides him with “The Inspiration” –as the intertitle says- for the Klan’s infamous outfits. So we have a fictional character as the inventor of the clothing of a group that will really exist and fight against black people’s rights.
Moreover, this same character is one of the members and leader of the Ku Klux Klan and rescues all his family when they are trapped in a little cabin being followed by black people and also saves Elsie Stoneman from being forced to get married with Lynch.
Apart from this, women of the Cameron house help to sew and hide the clothing that men are going to wear in order to keep being unknown.
Thus, the two central families in the film are given notable positions in national affairs -Stoneman is a leader of the Congress, the sons are part or the troops in the war, the eldest Cameron son is an instigator and a leader figure in the Klan. They are primary fictional characters.

The film as history
We can say that this film made history in many senses. It is one of the most popular film because of it technique but, at the same time, one of the most controversial because of its racist contents.
An autonomous language
Talking about it cinematic resources it can be said that Griffith is currently recognized as the inspired genius who became a means of expression -the so-called primitive cinema- in a language –endowed, therefore, a true grammar- marking the starting point of what it is known as cinematic narrative model, which serves as a benchmark of many filmmakers of his time: Dyke, Allan Dwan, Victor Fleming, Cecil B. DeMille, John Ford, etc ... who began his career as assistant directors Griffith and were enshrined in the forties, which made possible the birth of the Hollywood-classic film.
Film scholars agree that it is the single most important and key film of all time in American movie history, many of the resources used here are still seen in films today. But this a controversial point since there are two different opinions about Griffith and its originality. As I said in the cinematic context, it seems that most of the method that Griffith used had been used before him. Some scholars agree with this opinion; José Javier Marzal in his book David Wark Griffith on the author's work, states that the resources, whose paternity is usually attributed to Griffith, were not created by him. On the other hand for other authors such as Jacob Lewis, Griffith, in The Birth of a Nation, creates innovative film techniques like the middle ground, foreground, pan, camera movements, the mask, iris on, in addition to mounting.
Attribute to a single film the birth of a specific grammar is not entirely successful. From historical experience it cannot be assigned the authorship for a whole range of narrative technical elements to a single person or a single movie. What the director made was to use in a very coherent way the sources that already existed and giving them a new perspective.
A close-up of the gun used to kill Lincoln.
Griffith brought all of his experience and techniques to this film from his earliest short films at Biograph, including the following: * Close up shot: this method is used in many ways, for many reasons. Close-ups are often used as cutaways from a more distant shot to show detail, such as characters' emotions, or some intricate activity with their hands. Moving in to a close-up or away from a close-up is a common type of zooming.
There are several close-ups during the film. They are use to show the character’s emotions and feeling, or, as we can see in the picture, to emphazise objects. * Cross-cutting shot: is an editing technique most often used in films to establish action occurring at the same time in two different locations. In a cross-cut, the camera will cut away from one action to another action, which can suggest the simultaneity of these two actions but this is not always the case.
Suspense may be added by cross-cutting. It is built through the expectations that it creates and in the hopes that it will be explained with time. Cross-cutting also forms parallels; it illustrates a narrative action that happens in several places at approximately the same time.
In the film, cross-cutting is found in the final scenes per example, when we see the Cameron family trapped in the little cabin surrounded by black that want to kill them. This scene is cross-cut with the one that shows the Ku Klux Klan going to their rescue. * Pan shot
Pan shot: refers to the rotation in a horizontal plane of a still or video camera. Film and professional video cameras pan by turning horizontally on a vertical axis, but the effect may be enhanced by adding other techniques, such as rails to move the whole camera platform. In video display technology, panning refers to the horizontal scrolling of an image that is wider than the display.

This kind of shot it is found at the beginning of the war. In this moment we have a panoramic view of the men marching through the field.

* Reverse angle shot: this shot consists in showing something that the character in screen is watching.
In The Birth of a Nation we can find this when the eldest Cameron brother see a picture of Elsie. When the picture is shown to us, we have the reverse angle shot.

* Tracking shot: also known as a dolly shot, is a segment in which the camera is mounted on a camera dolly, a wheeled platform that is pushed on rails while the picture is being taken. The tracking shot can include smooth movements forward, backward, along the side of the subject, or on a curve.

In all the scenes were we can see the Klan riding horses and it seems that the camera is following them, we have a tracking shot.

* Iris shot of a war scene.
Iris shot: is a technique in which a black circle closes to end a scene. There two kinds of iris shots:

* Iris on: when the black circle becomes smaller. This shot is used to close a scene * Iris on: in this case the black circle becomes bigger; it indicates that the scene is starting.

* Dissolves: a dissolve is a gradual transition from one image to another; it overlaps two shots for the duration of the effect, usually at the end of one scene and the beginning of the next, but may be used in montage sequences also. It established a link between the two shots that are blended. In film, this effect is usually created with an optical printer by controlled double exposure from frame to frame.

One of the dissolves that can be found on The Birth of a Nation is in the scene after the war when at first the Master Hall is empty and in the next scene it is full. Griffith dissolved these two images.

* Intertitles: as we said before, Griffith used the intertitles in a very intelligent way, guiding our minds to where he wanted them to be.

* Nature and lighting
Nature stages: he used natural environment as background of some scenes. Until then, there were all artificial and controlled to avoid unexpected moments. This point includes the natural lightning, which was managed by Griffith’s camera man Billy Bitzer, considered the firs photography director of the history of film, masterfully.
We find, in the scene when Gus y following the little Cameron sister, a huge wood. This wood gives us the feeling of loneliness and helpless that the girl must be suffering. In the same scene, Guy appears on the stage from the dark corner of the woodland. This lack of light is used strategically by the director to symbolize the evil part of Gus.

* Music: Griffith is one of the first filmmakers interested in composing soundtracks accompanying their films. The music associated with characters, landscapes and situations play an anchor narrative role, giving to the filmic text more continuity.

Music is present all along the film and is adequate to the situation. We have some kind of thriller music when Flora Cameron is running away scared, per example.
In short, we see in The Birth of a Nation a wide range of technical innovations that can offer a very different film show what until then had been taking place. Now the camera moved, rewriting the film space, showing areas than in previous productions could not see because the camera was fixed, and creating a narrative based on the court and in the alternation of flat sizes.
Critical receptions
The film provoked confrontation due to the racism of his historical interpretation. Dixon's stage adaptation had led since 1905 significant reactions between anti-racist groups in the United States. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People - NAACP-which defended the black people’s rights of the United States, pushed for the film not to be distributed because his manifest racism. Thus, the film went from 1544 to 1375 shots, with the disappearance of several sequences in which renegade blacks sexually abused several white women, and an epilogue which suggests that the problems of racism in the country would be solved with the deportation of blacks to Africa.
Advert of the soon-coming film
But, despite from this, across the nation, responses mirrored one another with an astounding congruity. Writing back to Alabama from a sojourn in New York, reviewer Dolly Dalrymple announced that Birth might well be ‘called a silent drama’ but ‘when I saw it, it was far from silent... incessant murmurs of approval, roars of laughter, gasps of anxiety and outbursts of applause greeted every new picture that was thrown on the screen’ other audiences hissed loudly when the encroaching black hordes threatened to take the day. In a gallant gesture, one audience member opened fire on the screen in an effort to rescue Flora Cameron from the clutches of her black pursuer. Broadsheets reported in breathless tones that crowds all over were cheering ‘the mighty riders’ of the Ku Klux Klan as they charged to save the downtrodden South. Middle class decorum was being abandoned in the heat of the moment. People were even leaving the cinemas without that quintessential sign of class: their hats. The silent screen came alive in a sea of sound. The Birth of a nation’ the columnist Ward Greene concluded exuberantly, ‘is the awakener of every feeling’.
In the same way in 1915the Poughkeepsie Journal calls it, "The greatest dramatic narrative of the century" and claims that the film has been "Seen by Over Five Million People." Or we can read Wilson’s report about the film, "It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true". This other quotation of Mrs. Frank Anthony Walke, president of the Norfolk chapter of the U. D. C. who said: "The Birth of a Nation is wonderful. There are a few things that are not agreeable, but to make history correct this has to be with the pleasant. ... It is a revelation and all southerners should see it and glory in its teachings."
Page of a news paper talking about Birth.
So, African-Americans found themselves facing a racial affront of a breathtaking scale. From the moment that the film was released, both black organizations and white liberal newspapers went on the offensive. DuBois wrote furiously that the film was nothing more than an attempt to ‘capitalize burning race antagonisms’. The New York Age, a popular Negro newspaper, fiercely labeled the film ‘an appeal to the baser emotions’ and damned it as seeking ‘to degrade a people and incite race hatred’.

Scholars have tended towards a negative view of the African-American led protest efforts against The Birth of a Nation. In Lafayette, Indiana, one patron would emerge from seeing the film only to shoot a teenage black boy to death before the day was though. In Atlanta, the film’s inspiration triggered the formation of a new KKK and another reign of terror in the South. As patently objectionable as the film’s final act is, it is important to understand that at the time The Birth of a Nation was released, the Ku Klux Klan we know today, didn’t yet exist. The original Klan celebrated in the film, a Reconstruction-era upper-class white-supremacist secret society, was a separate group that had been defunct for decades. In fact, to his immortal ignominy, Griffith himself was unintentionally responsible for inspiring the second Klan with this very film, though the new Klan was far more hateful than the original (so much so that even Dixon, the author of The Clansmen, disavowed the new organization). In this light, it seems understandable that scholars would see the labor to have Birth stopped as being all in vain.

The cinema: a mass spectacle
With The Birth of a Nation, the public no longer has this conception of cinema as something modest that some people come to see and start to consider it a great mass show that will be witnessed by people of all kinds.
The Birth of a Nation is considered the first blockbuster, highlighting the enormous benefits accruing to its creator. These benefits and the success of the film, apart from the free publicity that rose from the controversy that it brought, were due to the large deployment of resources needed to develop the set.
Advert of the film
The film's initial budget amounted to $ 40,000, a figure four times the normal budget of a film. But this cost amounted to over $ 500,000. After six weeks of preparation in which the locations were searched and were consulted over a thousand documents, the film starts shooting on July 4, 1914. The filming of the movie took longer than three months, duration absolutely unprecedented at the time. The proportions of The Birth of a Nation are huge in every way: the film contained 1,544 shots (an average movie contained about 100) with a duration of more than 180 minutes; the number of participants in the production exceeded 18,000 people, more than 3000 horses were used; for making costumes there were employed more than 37,000 meters of fabric, among other things.
All these improvements brought as a result an increase in the influx of spectators to the movies and in the time that a viewer was in the auditorium to finish watching the film, which certainly had its impact on the entire film industry: the auditoriums were made larger to cover all the necessary places. It was necessary to made more comfortable auditoriums, which led to the installation of lobbies, comfortable armchairs, wardrobes where to leave the shelter, toilets, etc… Of course, the entrance to a cinema increased in price.
With this film we see that going to the cinema is no longer something to which few people go to become a spectacle of the masses, even today, continues to innovate every day more and more and faster. We can speak not only of art, but also of industry in the strictest sense: competition between wards to provide better services, distribution companies, including producers, etc… That is, the film simply as a novel and curious invention completely changes status and becomes a promising source of income in the form of mass entertainment.

Bibliography
Gabriel Bernal Carbajal, “El Nacimiento de una Nación”, David Wark Griffith: Los Comienzos de un lenguaje cinematográfico.
Gabriel Ramírez, El cine de Griffith, Era, México D. F. 1972
José Javier Marzal, David Wark Griffith, Cátedra, Madrid, 1998.
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