Silent Film

Banned & Censored Cinema

Silent Film: Edison, Porter, Griffith

May Irwin Kiss
Thomas A. Edison, Inc., USA, 1896, 18 sec.

SUMMARY

From Maguire & Baucus catalogue: An osculatory performance by May Irwin and John Rice. The most popular subject ever shown.

From Edison films catalog: By May Irwin and John Rice. They get ready to kiss, begin to kiss, and kiss and kiss and kiss in a way that brings down the house every time. 50 feet. 7.50.

NOTES

Copyright: no reg.

May Irwin (Beatrice Byke), John C. Rice (Billy Bilke).

Camera, William Heise.

Duration: 0:18 at 30 fps.

Scene from the New York stage comedy, The widow Jones, in which Irwin and Rice starred. According to Edison film historian C. Musser, the actors staged their kiss for the camera at the request of the New York world newspaper, and the resulting film was the most popular Edison Vitascope film in 1896.

Filmed April 1896, in Edison's Black Maria studio.

VIEW MOVIE ONLINE

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The Kiss
Thomas A. Edison, Inc., USA, 1900, 44 sec.

SUMMARY

From Edison films catalog: Nothing new, but an old thing done over again and done well. Some one has attempted to describe a kiss as "something made of nothing," but this is not one of that kind, but one of those old fashioned "home made" kind that sets the whole audience into merriment and motion, and has always proven a popular subject. It is very fine photographically and an exhibit is not complete without it. 60 feet. 9.00.

NOTES

Copyright: Thomas A. Edison; 9Mar1900; D5532.

Duration: 0:44 at 16 fps.

Based on the earlier Edison film, May Irwin kiss (1896).

Filmed ca. February to early March 1900.

VIEW MOVIE ONLINE

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/papr:@filreq
(@field(NUMBER+@band(edmp+1051))+@field(COLLID+edison))

The Great Train Robbery
Edwin S. Porter (for Edison), USA, 1903, approx 12 min.

SUMMARY

From Edison films catalog: This sensational and highly tragic subject will certainly make a decided "hit" whenever shown. In every respect we consider it absolutely the superior of any moving picture ever made. It has been posed and acted in faithful duplication of the genuine "Hold Ups" made famous by various outlaw bands in the far West, and only recently the East has been shocked by several crimes of the frontier order, which fact will increase the popular interest in this great Headline Attraction.

NOTES

Copyright: Thomas A. Edison; 1Dec1903; H38748.

Justus D. Barnes (head bandit), G. M. Anderson (slain passenger, tenderfoot, and robber), Walter Cameron (sheriff).

Camera, Edwin S. Porter, J. B. Smith, and others.

Duration: 3:30 (part 1), 3:54 (part 2), and 4:18 (part 3) at 18 fps.

Filmed during November 1903 at Edison's New York studio, in Essex County Park in New Jersey, and along the Lackawanna Railroad.

VIEW MOVIE ONLINE

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/papr:@filreq
(@field(NUMBER+@band(edmp+2443s3))+@field(COLLID+edison))

The Birth of A Nation; or The Clansman
D.W. Griffith, USA, 1915, approx 190 min.

SUMMARY

From the Library of Congress "American Memory" website: Griffith's story centers on two white families torn apart by the Civil War and reunited by what one subtitle calls, "common defence of their Aryan birthright." Promoting a skewed historical vision of a wartorn South further abused by carpetbaggers, scalawags, and radical Republicans, the film remakes Lincoln as a friend of the South. "I shall deal with them as though they had never been away," Griffith's Lincoln says. In The Birth of a Nation, the Ku Klux Klan rushes in to fill the void left by Lincoln's untimely death and the chaos of Reconstruction.

NOTES

Director, D. W. Griffith; writers, D. W. Griffith, Frank E. Woods; photographer, William Bitzer. Performers: Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Henry Walthall, Miriam Cooper, Robert Harron, Wallace Reid, Bessie Love, Elmo Lincoln, Raoul Walsh, Donald Crisp. Based on the novel The Clansman, by Thomas Dixon. Silent dialog with music.

Library of Congress: On Febuary 8, 1915, D.W. Griffith's controversial silent film, The Birth of a Nation, premiered in Los Angeles, California. Released under the title, The Clansman, the movie debuted only after Griffith sought an injunction from the court. Although local censors approved the film, city council members responded to concerns about the racist nature of the picture by ordering it suppressed.

New York City, 1947

Library of Congress: The NAACP immediately and effectively protested the film. Laden with stereotypes of happy slaves and lazy freedmen, and racist assumptions that African-American sexuality was inherently lascivious, The Birth of a Nation was considered a dangerous film. The crime of lynching black men, usually on trumped-up charges of sexual assault, remained a very real concern in 1915 and Griffith's movie effectively portrayed the Ku Klux Klan as a defender of endangered white womanhood. Protest groups had the film suppressed in several places and Griffith quickly edited out some of the most egregious scenes including a segment depicting the castration of an accused rapist.

VIEW MOVIE ONLINE

http://www.uno.edu/~drcom/Griffith/Birth/CW.html

REQUIRED READINGS & WEBSITES

• The Library of Congress "American Memory" website http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/today/feb08.html

• The Ohio Historical Society "The African-American Experience in Ohio, 1850-1920" website, in particular the 1917 Cleveland Advocate article "We'll Fight to the End Against 'Birth of Nation', Is Verdict of Race in Ohio" http://dbs.ohiohistory.org/africanam/page1.cfm?ItemID=6324

• Marjorie Heins, "Foreword" to Forbidden Films by Dawn B. Sova, course reader

• Dawn B. Sova, "Introduction" and "The Birth of a Nation", Forbidden Films: Censorship Histories of 125 Motion Pictures (NY: Checkmark Books, an imprint of Facts On File, Inc., 2001), course reader

• Edward de Grazia and Roger K. Newman, "'The Birth of a Nation'--and of Censorship", Banned Films: Movies, Censors and the First Amendment (NY: R.R. Bowker Co., 1982), course reader