Tagline: The dawn of a new art!
The Birth of a Nation movie storyline. In 1860, the Stoneman and Cameron families are part of the aristocracy, Austin Stoneman a powerful U.S. Congressman, the Cameron father a respected physician. The Stonemans live in the Pennsylvania countryside when Austin is not in Washington, while the Camerons live in Piedmont, South Carolina. Phil Stoneman and Ben Cameron, the eldest son of each respective family, are old school chums.
When Phil and his younger brother Tod Stoneman visit Ben in Piedmont, Phil falls in love with Ben’s eldest sister, Margaret Cameron, while Ben falls in love with the Stoneman’s only sister, Elsie Stoneman, after only seeing her photograph. The Stoneman brothers’ trip is cut short with the start of the Civil War. Despite being on opposing sides, the Stonemans and Camerons’ friendship is not diminished, even in direct battles, which results in casualties in both families.
Following the war and the assassination of President Lincoln, Austin, in a position of greater power and wanting to advance the cause of the blacks, appoints biracial Silas Lynch to rally the black vote in the south. This move is followed by the Stonemans’ move to Piedmont, a more favorable climate for Austin’s failing health. The move strengthens the romances between Phil and Margaret, and between Elsie and Ben. But Lynch, also based in Piedmont, has other things on his mind. An incident between a renegade black man named Gus and the Camerons’ youngest daughter, Flora Cameron, begins an uprising of the Ku Klux Klan to protect the dwindling white power.
A controversial, explicitly racist, but landmark American film masterpiece – these all describe ground-breaking producer/director D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915). The domestic melodrama/epic originally premiered with the title The Clansman in February, 1915 in Los Angeles, California, but three months later was retitled with the present title at its world premiere in New York, to emphasize the birthing process of the US. The film was based on former North Carolina Baptist minister Rev. Thomas Dixon Jr.’s anti-black, 1905 bigoted melodramatic staged play, The Clansman, the second volume in a trilogy.
The Birth of a Nation (1915)
Directed by: D.W. Griffith
Starring: Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Henry B. Walthall, Miriam Cooper, Mary Alden, Ralph Lewis, George Siegmann, Walter Long, Robert Harron, Wallace Reid, Joseph Henabery, Josephine Crowell
Screenplay by: D. W. Griffith, Frank E. Woods
Cinematography by: G.W. Bitzer
Film Editing by: D.W. Griffith, Joseph Henabery, James Smith, Rose Smith, Raoul Walsh
Costume Design by: Robert Goldstein, Clare West
Music by: Joseph Carl Breil, D.W. Griffith
Distributed by: Epoch Producing Co.
Release Date: February 8, 1915
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