Acting: An “Actor's Director”
Griffith was known as one of the first “actor's directors.”
In a day when stage actors were the true celebrities and film actors
were often treated as cogs in a machine, Griffith made film actors
artists of their medium. Much of his camera innovation was designed
to make film more effective, more humane, and therefore more cooperative
with the actors. Griffith scheduled six weeks of rehearsals into
the preproduction of The Birth of a Nation at a
time when actors normally showed up with little idea of what they
were going to do and were shouted through their motions on set.
Lillian Gish was already a stage actress when Griffith “discovered”
her for film. The two worked together on many shorts before The
Birth of a Nation. Early silent film acting drew its techniques
from the stage, with broad, obvious gestures that were meant to
be seen by everyone in the audience no matter how far away they
were seated. But this acting didn't work on film. Griffith's close-ups
allowed for more subtle expressions of gesture.
None of the film's prominent black roles were played by
black actors, but instead by white actors in blackface who were
painted with burnt cork. From the birth of cinema, American film
has popularized and reproduced predominant stereotypes and perceptions that
are held by society. Griffith purposely exploited as many of these
stereotypes as possible in The Birth of a Nation.
Black performers were forced into a narrow range of types, so they
attempted to create complex characters within the confines of the
roles they were given. Many of the black actors who worked on the
film rose above stereotypes by creating resilience, humor, and humanity
in their characters. This early struggle, encapsulating the historical and
contemporary challenge of race relations, was the beginning of black
cultural identity in American cinema.
