Indefatigable Advocate

Why another book on Birth of a Nation after all the analyses—cinematic, historical, sociological, political, religious, and others—to which it has been subjected? Melvyn Stokes addresses the question directly in his Introduction, after providing a succinct review of some of the major assessments of the film. The commentary has become so voluminous, he asserts, that a synthesis is now required. But he offers more than merely that. His book’s subtitle—A History of “The Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time”—is illuminating. Stokes, who is Professor of History in Kings College London, has been an indefatigable advocate for the proposition that the study of films must consist of more than merely theoretical analysis of what appears on the screen or discussion of those who, in a narrow sense, have produced the works.

The more expansive historical inquiry he advocates also includes the large and complex contexts of filmmaking—societal as well as corporate—and the multifarious experiences of film viewers. Skepticism toward the film-as-text and auteur approaches has been evident throughout Stokes’ career, in his earlier publications and in his efforts as an organizer of conferences. He remains faithful to the theme here, as he cites his exploitation of archival resources, another rationale for this new treatment of Griffith’s most famous product. Unfortunately, he writes, “Film scholars have at times seemed unaware of both historical research … and the existence of archival materials” (p. 13). Although this remark is directed particularly toward treatments of Birth of a Nation, it seems clear that Stokes has the larger realm of film studies in mind as well.

Stokes practices what he has long preached, positioning Birth in several interconnected contexts: the biography of Thomas Dixon, whose novels inspired the screenplay and who remained involved with the production and exhibition of the film; Griffith’s life and directorial career; the development of filmmaking in the United States; and the histories and historiographies of the Civil War and Reconstruction, earlier and later twentieth century America, and the Civil Rights Movement. He shows that the thesis of the film was broadly consistent with the works of the “Dunning School” of historians, who presented a “tragic legend” of the Reconstruction Era that has continued to exist in some realms of the popular imagination, and thus invokes the ongoing debate about the medium of film as a tool of the historical discipline. Griffith’s own belief that film was actually a superior teacher of history than books foreshadowed the discussion of the 1990s, when Ken Burns’s Civil War television series reached much larger audiences than the publications of contemporary historians

Stokes’ research has embraced both the massive literature on the film as well as a host of primary sources, including U.S. Census records, newspaper files, the archives of the NAACP, and the papers of Griffith, Booker T. Washington, and Woodrow Wilson among others. His twenty-page bibliography is long enough that it would have been helpful to divide it into categories, though that is a small quibble. The historian’s craft is evident in Stokes’ second-level conversation with his readers in the endnotes, though he also displays his mastery of the discourse of literary and film criticism. An American reader must be impressed with his almost unerring grasp of the nuances of the history, politics and geography of the United States, which is not always seen in the work of Continental and British scholars. He cites and assesses the efforts of other interpreters of Griffith and his work, always confidently but gently asserting his own thesis.

The elegance of the text makes it clear that Stokes labored long to create a graceful narrative that unfolds smoothly and is amply documented—traditional narrative history that is precise without being jargon-laden and analytical without the loss of absorption in the story. Stokes has produced a history of Birth of a Nation as an artifact and document, something of significance not merely...