The Directors Guild Of America Disgraces the Name of D.W. Griffith in the 21st Century

D.W. Griffith directing W.C. Fields in The Royal Girl, 1926

Even today, at the start of the 21st century, for no apparent reason, the Directors Guild of America’s National Board, without asking any Guild members to vote on the issue, unanimously voted to retire the name of the Guild’s D.W. Griffith Award, which was created to honor distinguished achievement in motion picture direction. The DGA’s reasoning for this decision rests on the accusation that he helped foster “ intolerable racial stereotypes,” and they will, at a later date, come up with a new name that will “likewise become the highest triumph a director can achieve”.

D.W. Griffith & assistant director Emmet Emerson

The DGA is the one organization on this planet that should be embracing the work of D.W. Griffith, the man whose image graced the first motion picture stamp created by the United States Post Office--the man who invented Hollywood and cinema grammar. You can’t strive any higher than to be compared to Griffith and his achievements, but the DGA’s reasons at this point in time for distancing itself from him makes no sense--it’s a disgrace, and it needs to be rectified now.

The Birth of an Art Form

The Birth of a Nation -click to view-

One thing is certain: without The Birth of a Nation, no understanding of Griffith is even possible. Without a full study of its history, the birth of cinema as we know it, and the history of the world's experience of the motion picture, would remain a story without a beginning. This powerful, thematic, and violently controversial film-the most controversial ever exhibited, was and still is a fact of life. It provoked a cinematic, emotional, political, and social explosion. It was the first major event of motion picture history, the first since the camera itself was invented. It was also an event of far-reaching, consequence in the political and social history of the United States. After 85 years of history, the chronicle of which verges on fantasy, it has long since taken on the character and the dimension of a landmark in the complex relationship of Christianity, the White Race, and the Black Race.

The Controversy

Mae Marsh and Henry Walthall The Birth of a Nation, 1915 -view scenes-

We are still living in the shadow, still suffering from the ideological fall out, of the emotional explosion detonated more then a half a century ago by The Birth of A Nation. On the aesthetic side, it established the basis of film technique.

The Birth of a Nation, 1915 George Siegmann terrorizes Lillian Gish

It established the creative supremacy of the film director. It established the motion picture as a weapon of propaganda It demonstrated to the partisans of the stage and of still older arts that the new medium of Film could produce works of art and of thought. It gave rise to a new profession-film criticism. On the political and the social side, it established the motion picture as a mass-medium, in contrast to the older arts of intimate appeal and range. It demonstrated that cinema, no less than literature and no less than the stage, could become a topic of serious critical, esthetic, intellectual, political, social, and technical discussion. In this way it brought the motion picture into a position of commanding influence in the social life of the American nation.

Weeks before The Birth of a Nation opened in Boston, mysterious rumors spread about the film. After it was first shown, crowds stormed the theatre and the Boston State House to get the performance stopped. April 19, 1915

The sheer weight of the documented story of the denunciation and the violence which attended its appearance through the decades of exhibition, and of the volume of debate over its depiction of the Negro race and of black and white relations, renders an account of what happened physically forbidding. More than a half a century later, the denunciation continues, and the storm over the film serves as a barometer of the global conflict, involving forces and issues set in motion by, but no means limited to, race. From the beginning it touched off several emotionally and politically explosive, interrelated, parallel controversies--controversy over Griffith; controversy over the film; controversy over the subject matter and its treatment; controversy over the controversy

Griffith

The Little Colonel leads Piedmonts first regiment to a distant battlefield The figure in the business suit is reputedly Griffith wandering in the scene

The first attacks, in 1915, fell upon the film itself. However, before the first month had passed, the brunt of the offensive fell on Thomas Dixon, author of the two novels, “The Clansman”, and the “Leopards Spots”, on which the story proper is based. The Clansman was first published in 1905; The Leopards Spots the following year, both were best sellers in their time. But a stageplay based on the Clansman two and three years later, quite apart from a lack of artistic merit, failed commercially, except in the South and Southern California

-click to view video-

In 1912, the Kinemacolor company made a feature film based on the book and the play, but the color process was so poor, that the picture was scrapped. Then Epoch productions, under Griffith, went before the camera in 1914, all in Black & White, but printed on hand tinted stock. It began as The Clansman; it emerged as The Birth of a Nation. Then, in 1915 and 1916, as newcomers to the movies flocked by the tens of thousands into theatres across the land to see this film, the Negros and the white-liberals recognized that the ultimate source of the dramatic power of the film was its director-Griffith

Before The Birth of a Nation rounded out the third month of its initial run, the emphasis of the attacks again shifted. Dixon's name was rarely heard any more; Griffith, on the contrary, became the new and permanent target of attack. Griffith was openly cursed in the newspapers and in street demonstrations. He remains today the favorite target, and because of this there is not effort to understand D.W. Griffith's full body of work.

NEXT: The controversy continues part 2

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