| The Birth of a Nation & The Civil War Films of D.W. Griffith (1915)
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| Front Cover |
Actor |
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| Lillian Gish |
Elsie Stoneman
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| Mae Marsh |
Flora Cameron, the Little Sister
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| Henry B. Walthall |
Col. Ben Cameron
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| Henry Walthall |
Ben Cameron, the Little Colonel
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| Miriam Cooper |
Margaret Cameron
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| Robert Harron |
Ted Stoneman
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| Ralph Lewis |
The Honorable Austin Stoneman, Leader of the House
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| Wallace Reid |
Jeff, the blacksmith
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| George Siegmann |
Silas Lynch
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| Charles Stevens |
Volunteer
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| Maxfield Stanley |
Duke Cameron
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| Mary Alden |
Lydia Brown
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| Walter Long |
Gus
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| Movie Details |
| Genre |
Drama; War |
| Director |
D.W. Griffith |
| Writer |
Thomas F. Dixon Jr. |
| Studio |
Triangle |
|
| Language |
English |
| Audience Rating |
G (General Audience) |
| Running Time |
175 mins |
| Country |
USA |
| Color |
Color |
| IMDb Rating |
7.1 |
|
| Plot |
| The most successful and artistically advanced film of its time, The Birth of a Nation has also sparked protests, riots, and divisiveness since its first release. The film tells the story of the Civil War and its aftermath, as seen through the eyes of two families. The Stonemans hail from the North, the Camerons from the South. When war breaks out, the Stonemans cast their lot with the Union, while the Camerons are loyal to Dixie. After the war, Ben Cameron (Henry B. Walthall), distressed that his beloved south is now under the rule of blacks and carpetbaggers, organizes several like-minded Southerners into a secret vigilante group called the Ku Klux Klan. When Cameron's beloved younger sister Flora (Mae Marsh) leaps to her death rather than surrender to the lustful advances of renegade slave Gus (Walter Long), the Klan wages war on the new Northern-inspired government and ultimately restores "order" to the South. In the original prints, Griffith suggested that the black population be shipped to Liberia, citing Abraham Lincoln as the inspiration for this ethnic cleansing. Showings of Birth of a Nation were picketed and boycotted from the start, and as recently as 1995, Turner Classic Movies cancelled a showing of a restored print in the wake of the racial tensions around the O.J. Simpson trial verdict. — Hal Erickson |
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| Product Details |
| Format |
DVD |
| Region |
Region 1 |
| UPC |
738329026622 |
| Release Date |
10/12/2002 |
| Nr of Disks/Tapes |
2 |
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Extra Features
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| Black & White |
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