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Chapter 4
Politics in the Silent Movies
The purpose of this chapter is to examine the silent era of popular filmmaking and the
political movements that informed them. Until the middle of the 1920s political films
were numerous and popular. The most influential and controversial of these was The
Birth of A Nation (1915) set in the Civil War and defined by militarism, racist caricatures
of former slaves, and celebration of the Ku Klux Klan. Other important films include
Greed, The Big Parade, and The Crowd.
Objectives for Chapter 4:
1. Explore the coincidence of the medium’s development with the Progressive and
reform movements, dominant forces in American politics into the 1920s.
2. Observe how stereotyping relative to race and ethnicity dominated in this period.
3. Provide detailed analysis of racial and gender politics in The Birth of a Nation, “the
blockbuster of its day,” and an overview of D.W. Griffith’s political views.
4. Observe how fear of the Russian revolution, antipathy to organized labor, and the
“political boss” figure informed the films produced later in the 1920s, a relatively
timid period politically.
5. Describe social realist and anti-war films of the silent era.
Discussion Questions for Chapter 4:
1. What made early films, despite lack of sound and color, so powerful to their
audiences?
2. In what way was the early period (1900s–mid-1920s) so political?
3. Why, after a period of popularity, did sympathetic portrayals of workers and unions
fade in the 1920s?
4. What was offensive about The Birth of a Nation and what effect generally did the
film have on the movie audience of the period?
5. What political faction in the American Civil War did the film favor? Disfavor?
6. According to the film what events necessitated the start of the Ku Klux Klan and
what were its aims?
7. What societal trends of the 1910s accompanied Griffith’s look backward at mid-19th
century American history? Including but not limited to The Birth of a Nation,
describe Griffith’s political perspective.
8. What modifications did studio executives make to King Vidor’s The Crowd and Eric
Von Stroheim’s Greed? Why? How did these changes alter each film’s ideological
perspective?
Activities for Chapter 4:
1. Put students into pairs or small groups. Write a list of emotions (greed, fear, love,
etc.) or scenarios (wife confronts cheating husband; laborer tries to inspire another
worker to join union; man cheats another out of savings, etc.) and assign one to each
group. Ask each to act out the emotion and see if classmates can figure out the
emotion. The purpose is to show the difficulty in conveying information and feelings
without words.
2. Screen Edwin Porter and Thomas Edison’s The Great Train Robbery (1903) and
track the use of parallel editing to create suspense. How do the last few seconds of
the film differ from the rest of it? What ideological value does the ending promote?
Link to the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCWKh14Mvzg.
3. Screen clips from The Birth of a Nation that highlight its political perspective:
intertitles showing the blame Griffith places on planting of “African seed,”
reverential treatment of Lincoln, dehumanizing scenes of freed slaves in the state
legislature, Flora’s childish frolic in the forest, Flora chased by Gus before suicidal
plunge, beginning of the clan launched through torture of Gus and consecrated with
Flora’s blood on her brother’s handkerchief, KKK ride to the rescue at the end, etc.
4. A section of Hollywood documentary on Erich von Stroheim looks at his career and
how as an Austrian immigrant he was received: Part I:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A36EGECeMEY; Part II:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpTiw6q_EXI. (Greed is addressed at end of
Part I, into Part II.) How does von Stroheim’s “realist” cinematic aesthetic convey a
political view? How does the studio’s reaction to Greed conflict with that politics?
