Birth of a nation

1. D.W. Griffith and the
Development of Narrative Form

2. Gentrification
• 1907 several NY
nickelodeon owners
arrested for violating
Sunday closing laws,
showing indecent
pictures, and noise;
• 1908 balcony collapsed,
mayor revoked all
licenses.
• Producers claim
$50,000,000 in losses.

3. Gentrification
• Epic, biblical, novel
and classical literature
• Close-up, POV and
editing
• Feature films
• Movie palace

4. D. W. Griffith (1875-1948)
• Began at Edison Studio 1908
– Worked with American Mutoscope
and Biograph Company 1908-1913
(450 films)
• Self-credited Contributions
– "I invented the 'close-up' figures”
• Deleuze – miniaturization of the set
• Objective set -> subjective
– "I borrowed the 'cutback' from Charles
Dickens” (earlier events, "story within
a story," parallel action)
• cross-cut, Parallel editing
• Mise-en-scene, framing, tracking shots
• Editing
– Interframe narrative
• Scenes broken down unto several
shots
– Master shot
– Insert/Close-up
– match cut, eyeline match, fades, POV-
reaction shot, accelerated montage

5. Birth of a Nation (1915)

6. D. W. Griffith’s Perspective
• Equates political
equality of blacks with
the freedom to sexually
assault white women
– Klan is morally justified
• Dunning school of
reconstruction history
– “the vicious doctrines
spread by the
carpetbaggers”
– Mislead blacks – social
and political
incompetence

7. D. W. Griffith’s Perspective
• Everett Carter - “plantation illusion”
– The antebellum (pre-war) South was a
golden age of agrarian feudal joy:
wealthy autocratic landowners and
happy obedient slaves
• There was perfect harmony between
“colors” as long as the hierarchy was kept;
and that the “Negro” were happy to be
faithful servants (“faithful souls”)
– The freed union ‘Negro’ would be a
renegade terror
• The ‘Negro’ was somehow less than
human
• The mulatto was the curse of South
because of the mixing of ‘Negro’ bestiality
with white intelligence
– Played on cultural exploitation of sexual
fears (rape, miscegenation, brutality)
• Social conflict as sexual
– The North was seen as a cold, harsh,
industrial society

8. D. W. Griffith
• Griffith seemed unaware
of the rhetorical power of
the narrator’s point of
view:
– "in less than ten years . . .
the children in the public
schools will be taught
practically everything by
moving pictures. . . . There
will be no opinions
expressed. You will merely
be present at the making
of history.” (Editor, April
24, 1915)

9. Critical Reading
• Rogin – landmark in film narrative technique is also a
propagator of dangerous U.S. myths
• Rather than rescuing Griffith's form from his content,
Rogin examines the relationship between the two
• Dixon, Wilson and Griffith shared a common project -
screen memory
– The Birth of a Nation
– "America" began with the Clan
– Clan reunited America
• Southern romanticism as a frame of reference for
global, national identities
– similarities between immigrants-imperial subjects and
Negros
– Occupation of Haiti – safeguard interests of U.S.
corporations (United Fruit; Haitian American Sugar
Company)
• Conflict of New Woman and Machine
• Great Migration – dramatizes fears of northern
audiences concerned about new black neighbors as a
result of the “Great Migration” (1910-1930 - 40%
increase in black population)

10. Griffith on Acting
• Motion Picture has more poetic beauty
than the stage-play.
• Soul (or “light within”): great
personalities, true emotions, and the
ability to depict them before the
camera
– Stage emotions will not do
– No recorded voice
– Every quiver of facial muscles, gleam of
the eye, expression of the face, every
getsure
• fashion of action changes with each age
– acting of today may seem unnatural or
impossible to later audiences
• less with hands, more with eyes
– No light hair or light blue eyes