Quinton Tarentino said . . . THE BIRTH OF A NATION ......it gave rebirth to the Klan and all the blood that that was spilled throughout -- until the early '60s, practically. I think that both Rev. Thomas Dixon Jr. and D.W. Griffith, if they were held by Nuremberg Laws, they would be guilty of war crimes for making that movie because of what they created there.
American Racist: The Life and
Films of Thomas Dixon [Hardcover]
Thomas Dixon has a notorious reputation as the writer of the source material
for D.W. Griffith's groundbreaking and controversial 1915 feature film The Birth
of a Nation. Perhaps unfairly, Dixon has been branded an arch-conservative and a
racist obsessed with what he viewed as "the Negro problem." As American Racist
makes clear, however, Dixon was a complex, multitalented individual who, as well
as writing some of the most popular novels of the early twentieth century, was
involved in the production of some eighteen films.
Dixon used the motion picture
as a propaganda tool for his often outrageous opinions on race, communism,
socialism, and feminism. His most spectacular production, The Fall of a Nation
(1916), argues for American preparedness in the face of war and boasts a musical
score by Victor Herbert, making it the first American feature film to have an
original score by a major composer. Like the majority of Dixon's films, The Fall
of a Nation has been lost, but had it survived, it might well have taken its
place alongside The Birth of a Nation as a masterwork of silent film. Anthony
Slide examines each of Dixon's films and discusses the novels from which they
were adapted. Slide chronicles Dixon's transformation from a major supporter of
the original Ku Klux Klan in his early novels to an ardent critic of the modern
Klan in his last film, Nation Aflame. American Racist is the first book to
discuss Dixon's work outside of literature and provide a wide overview of the
life and career of this highly controversial twentieth-century southern
populist.
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