The Birth of a Nation (1915), directed by D. W. Griffith and based on the novel The Clansman by Thomas F. Dixon, Jr., is considered by most if not all film historians as the first modern, full-length motion picture, in terms of both storytelling and film technique. The movie was Hollywood’s box-office champion for over twenty years, only topped in 1939 by Gone with the Wind. Indisputably a masterpiece, the film and Griffith’s reputations have been diminished among modern audiences because of the movie’s glorification of the Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan, its depraved depiction of Freedmen, and its use of white actors in blackface. The movie starred Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Henry B. Walthall (as Henry Walthall), Miriam Cooper, Mary Alden, Ralph Lewis, and George Siegmann (as George Seigmann). After the U.S. Civil War, the Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, Austin Stoneman (Lewis), is determined to crush the defeated Southern whites under the jackboot of freed slaves, only to be thwarted by a fearless fraternity of masked, robed vigilantes. (The screenshots below preserve the sepia tones of the original film).
The following firearms were used in the film The Birth of a Nation:
John Wilkes Booth (Raoul Walsh) uses a Double Barreled Percussion Cap Pistol to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln (Joseph Henabery (as Jos. Henabery)). This weapon is different from the type used in the actual murder.
Various characters wield the Single Action Army revolver. This is anachronistic, of course, since the revolver was first manufactured in 1873. Still, the weapon was presumably plentiful and readily available to filmmakers in 1915.
