“The most powerful spectacle ever produced.” When NB freaked out over a racist film

A film depicting blackface and the Ku Klux Klan would have a hard time in modern cinemas.

But it was all the rage when DW Griffiths The birth of a nation toured over 100 years ago and was well received when he performed in New Brunswick.

The 1915 film, which paints an inaccurate picture of the reconstruction period in the American South, was a real event.

“I think it would have been different for most people to see this film…not just in New Brunswick,” said Scott Preston, a film professor at the University of New Brunswick.

“It was presented as a special event.”

Louis B. Mayer got his first big break in Hollywood when he acquired the screening rights to the film in New England. (famousentrepreneurs.com)

Griffith's film was the most ambitious Hollywood film ever produced at that time.

Preston said most films at the time were about 20 minutes long, but The birth of a nation lasted more than three hours.

The film was the first feature film to be shown at the White House and was a success; the distribution rights were quickly snapped up.

In fact, an upstart from Saint John named Louis B. Mayer, of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer fame, bought the film rights in New England and launched his Hollywood career.

Members of the Ku Klux Klan are portrayed as heroes and the film features white actors with blackened faces portraying racist stereotypes.

The Ku Klux Klan is portrayed as a hero in the film. (Internet Archive)

Preston said this was pretty common practice in the entertainment industry at the time.

“People loved going to variety shows and watching the performers with their faces painted black,” Preston said.

The film toured North America as part of a roadshow and premiered on March 27, 1916 at the Grand Opera House in Moncton.

Local newspapers called the film the “most tremendous spectacle ever produced,” and early reviews of the film in Moncton were overwhelmingly positive.

An advertisement for a film screening in Saint John in 1917. (Saint John Standard)

“The film is wonderful and unlike anything else ever shown in Canada,” said Moncton’s Daily Times.

But from the beginning there were opponents to the screening of the film.

The screening in Moncton attracted members of Halifax's black community and Nova Scotia film censor AE Wall.

The film was to be shown at the Opera House in Saint John, Union Street. (Article from the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick – 1906 P210\962)

According to the Halifax Recorder, the province's music academy decided not to show the film “in the interest of good feeling in the community.”

When the film came to Saint John, advance ticket sales for the opera were the highest in the opera house's history, according to the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

This did not go down well with the city's black and religious communities.

The city's Evangelical Alliance sent a representative to a censorship meeting to try to ban the film.

“The Birth of a Nation aims to incite racial prejudice,” said a motion at an alliance meeting, according to Saint John's Daily Telegraph.

Tara Taylor, a Halifax filmmaker, said any techniques the film developed were overshadowed by the fact that black filmmakers did not have the same resources available to them as white filmmakers during that time. (CBC)

The provincial censors reviewed the film, which was released uncut. According to the Saint John Standard, the censors found that “there was nothing objectionable about the picture.”

Reassessment of the film

Even more than a century later, the history of film remains complicated.

In 2013, New York film critic Richard Brody wrote, “The worst thing about The Birth of a Nation is how good it is.”

The film is often compared to the films of Leni Riefenstahl, which were technically brilliant but were little more than propaganda for Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.

But Tara Taylor, a Halifax-based filmmaker, says any techniques used in the film are overshadowed by the fact that black filmmakers during this era did not have the same resources available to them as white filmmakers.

“We didn’t have the resources to learn that,” Taylor said.

“I don't want anyone to pat themselves on the back for any technological advances or anything like that because they didn't share their knowledge with anyone but themselves.”

Obediya W. Jones-Darrell (Vince Robinson/ Submitted by Obediya W. Jones-Darrell)

Obediya Jones-Darrell, a Nova Scotia filmmaker who divides his time between the United States and Canada, said the film “trivializes the humanity of everyone who sees it.”

“This film and other films that use blackface and everything else and degrade the characters that are at the center of the story do a disservice to anyone,” Jones-Darrell said.

He said that even if the focus is on the technical prowess of the film, the voices of the people who were against the film at the time will be heard.

“Many people may have thought the film was terrible at the time, but all we hear is that the film was technically great,” Jones-Darrell said.

Taylor, who described herself as “very open-minded,” did not disappoint when asked how the film should be consumed today.

“Break it up and make it a footnote,” she said.

(CBC)