Talk:The Birth of a Nation/Archive 3

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Disputed Claim

This article claims "Under President Woodrow Wilson, [The Birth of a Nation] was the first motion picture to be shown at the White House." However, this contridicts a similar claim for the movie Cabiria. On the article page for Cabiria, in the section titled Distribution, remake and restorations, it's claimed that "Cabiria was the first motion picture to be screened on the grounds of the White House." Can anyone clarify this? Thanks. Billertl (talk) 03:19, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Cabiria was screened on the White House lawn; The Birth of a Nation was apparently shown inside the White House. Ewulp (talk) 04:58, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Box Office

I don't know who put $50,000,000 in as the box office for this film, but that is vastly higher than it actually made. I know that Gone With The Wind was the biggest box office hit up to it's time (1939) and it brought in $39,000,000. So how in the world did The Birth of a Nation get credited with $50,000,000?

I edited the article and put in $11,000,000 (http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/1915/0BOAN.php) as per the enclosed link. $11,000,000 was a vast amount in 1915 so the film was a huge success, but it's nowhere near the incredibly inaccurate $50,000,000 the article claimed before my edit. TobusRex (talk) 03:55, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Your edit changed the quoted material in note 4; I've reverted to restore fidelity to the source. If reliable sources give lower estimates of the 35-year gross, those figures can be added and the article edited to clarify attributions. $11 million appears to be the first-year gross only. Ewulp (talk) 07:09, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Richard Schickel, in D.W. Griffith: An American Life (pp.80-81) says that nobody knows the real number, and that there has been much confusion between "producer's gross" and "box office figures". According to Schickel, Epoch (the production company) seems to have grossed not quite $5 million on the movie's first run, but since Epoch received only about 10% of the box office take from states' rights distributors, the gross would be about $50 million. But he also says exhibitors and distributors "skimmed money from Epoch by underreporting grosses", and concludes that "Birth certainly generated more than $60 million in box-office business in its first run—and perhaps more." Ewulp (talk) 08:08, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

It's been my understanding that these box office figures generally count only first runs, but I may be incorrect about that. Movie tickets in 1915 went for 7 cents a pop, although I have seen an article stating tickets for Birth of a Nation were $2, which I find preposterous..that would be roughly $114 for a movie ticket in today's money.$50,000,000 at 7 cents a ticket would mean that the movie would have to be viewed over 700 million times. Again, that's an insane number. I think $50,000,000 is wildly inaccurate and that the math bears it out (assuming only first runs count). However if the $50,000,000 is in TODAY'S DOLLARS,especially counting multiple releases, that would be quite doable...but it would only be about $500,000 in 1915 dollars. TobusRex (talk) 01:54, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Well, our article for Gone with the Wind explains that the first release box office was $32 million, and cites a 2013 source for a global gross of $390 million. It's good to have both in the article. As for ticket price, we follow sources, and according to multiple reliable sources $2.00 was indeed the standard ticket price in New York. D.W. Griffith's the Birth of a Nation: A History of the Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time by London Melvyn Stokes University College (see here) is one of many sources that confirm huge demand for tickets at surprising prices; in LA, 75 cent tickets were resold by scalpers for $2.50. Your figure of $114 for the equivalent of the ticket price in today's dollars is considerably too high; a $2.00 ticket in 1915 would be a $46.65 ticket in 2014, according to this calculator. What does it cost to go to a restaurant or attend a baseball game today? More than 1% of Americans do such things at least occasionally. Ewulp (talk) 02:56, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

I still maintain that $50,000,000 is likely much too high and that the $11,000,000 from my earlier linked source was probably more accurate. However your link shows quite a difference from my estimate earlier. For reference I used http://www.davemanuel.com/whatitcost.php and extrapolated, apparently incorrectly. That being said you'll notice that my link says the "inflation adjusted" 7 cents from 1915 is equal to $1.63 in todays money (fairly close to the $2 mentioned earlier), which makes me think it likely that the $50,000,000 is inflation adjusted, and not the actual amount grossed. I'm willing to drop this issue, btw....I generally don't make many edits but that $50,000,000 really struck me in a bad way since I was a huge movie box office buff years ago and I know Gone With the Wind was the champ for decades at $39 million. Thanks for the interesting discussion Ewulp. TobusRex (talk) 07:07, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

And thank you for bringing attention to a weakness in the article. I'll try to edit the "Significance" section this week to clarify where the differing numbers come from—it now reads as if the film made most of its money in the 1940s, and that's not right. Ewulp (talk) 07:48, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Information about the film's techniques needs to be added

The article notes several times that Birth of a Nation contributed "innovative techniques" but I can't really find any examples listed. In fact, the discussion of the racist elements is far more detailed than is the discussion of the apparently positive contributions to film. Maybe that information is in the cited sources? I don't know much about this area, but the absence stood out to me, so if anyone with knowledge in filmmaking can add this content, that would be wonderful. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.59.115.25 (talk) 16:46, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Score

The versions I've seen prominently feature Grieg's Holberg Suite which isn't mentioned here. Is it only in the modern restorations? Lycurgus (talk) 17:48, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to one external link on The Birth of a Nation. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add {{cbignore}} after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}} to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/20141023092147/http://www.moviejustice.com/vault/index.php?p=getitem&db_id=4&item_id=27 to http://www.moviejustice.com/vault/index.php?p=getitem&db_id=4&item_id=27

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the —^{cyberbot II}_{Talk to my owner:Online} 10:44, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Box office and budget

First of all I would like to commend the editor who wrote the The_Birth_of_a_Nation#Box_office_performance section; it is well written and informative. However, there are some potential inaccuracies in the figures which I have taken the liberty of correcting:

1. I have corrected the budget from $112,000 to >$100,000. I have seen many figures ranging from $70,000 to $150,000, but $110,000 is the most commonly reported figure and the figure that is usually given by those who are the most informed about the film. In the absence of an exact figure I have changed it to >$100,000 to be consistent with Hall & Neale: "In common with most film historians, he estimates that The Birth of Nation cost “just a little more than $100,000” to produce...".
2. The box office figure of $11 million reported at The Numbers is almost certainly incorrect or incomplete. I have noticed inconsistencies at this site before (see Talk:2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(film)/Archive_9#Box-office.2FThe_Numbers) and the site often confuses box office grosses and gross rental for earlier films. Epoch's early figures were well maintained: by February 1916 Epoch had earned $2.2 million from the film, and by the end of 1917 it had earned $4.8 million. By 1919 it had earned $5.2 million according to Griffith's own records. Even if you use the standard 50/50 split between distributor and exhibitor that is common today that would put the first run gross at $10.4 million; however, as Schickel points out state rights returned a much lower percentage—typically 10%—and he estimates that the film grossed at least $60 million during its first run. Producer Harry Aitken estimated the cumulative rental at $15–18 million in the 1950s when he was touting a sound remake to investors which is more than what The Numbers has listed as the exhibition gross! I think we can be fairly confident that these early figures are accurate, especially those from Griffith's own records and Schickel's research, so I have removed the estimate given by The Numbers.

Betty Logan (talk) 06:13, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

QMUL Education Project

Hello, we are Students at QMUL. Over the past few weeks we have edited this page a little bit, and have tried to improve its content.

• The ‘Cast’ section was edited to be more accurate, using the cast list on Paul McEwan’s book 'Birth of a Nation'.
• The title of the section 'Responses' was changed to 'Responses and reception'
• The image at the top of the section was changed, as it was unrelated to the particular section and replaced with an image of greater significance to the topic.
• The section named 'Sequel' was renamed to 'Sequel, appropriations, and spin-offs' and was expanded. Various paragraphs were moved from the 'Responses and reception' section to this one.
• The section 'Sequel, appropriations, and spin-offs' was moved from under the 'Significance' section to under the 'Responses and reception' section.

Nurimos (talk)

While the Film project welcomes the development of an article about such an important film it is important to bear in mind that information has to be WP:Verifiable i.e. you need to provide sources. If you are using an alternative source for the cast section (or any piece of information) then you need to state where that information comes from. This is easy to do by writing <ref>author, title, [journal], [edition], year, publisher, page number</ref> for books and journals and <ref>author, title, website URL, accessdate</ref> for websites. If you don't provide your sources in the article then it is very likely the information will be removed down the line, which is a shame if the information is legitimate. If you have any questions about referencing or need any help feel free to ask on this talk page. Betty Logan (talk) 14:50, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Redirect default link to 2016 film

The redirect link for "Birth of a Nation" (with no qualifiers) should redirect to what the vast majority of people will be looking for, the 2016 film. While it may be early at this time, the editors should consider this necessary linkage to reduce the chance of vandalism and consequences brought about in society in general. Michaelopolis (talk) 16:37, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

• That's just never going to happen. This has 100 years of history and is one of the most studied, analyzed, most important and controversial films of the 20th century, taught in every film class. The 2016 film has some decades to go to catch up. GuzzyG (talk) 17:21, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Henry Block shooting of Edward Manson in Lafayette

This has become an accepted narrative of the story connected with this movie; however, most newspaper coverage of this shooting makes no mention of the film. It was never brought up in the trial and most coverage suggests that Block had been drinking all day and the young man bumped into him. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bubthunder (talk • contribs) 16:16, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

References

Reception outside the US?

How well known and widely viewed was this film, outside the USA?

In particular, would the founder of the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift in the UK in 1920 have been expected to understand the connotations of the initials? Andy Dingley (talk) 20:20, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

To what extent someone in the U.K. In 1902 would have been aware of the Klan, I don't know. But I do know that no one in 1902 knew anything about a film from 1916. Wschart (talk) 17:55, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, 1920 Andy Dingley (talk) 18:30, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Comment The Birth of a Nation was by all accounts very successful outside of North America, at least on a financial level. On its initial release studio revenue was $5.2 million, with $3.5 million coming from US & Canada, so $1.7 million presumably came from overseas markets. The scale of the overseas success is not obvious from the figures alone, so here are some yardsticks:

• The second and third biggest films of the silent era were Ben-Hur and The Big Parade (both 1925); they earned $5 million and $1.1 million respectively overseas. There is no record of other American silent features to my knowledge earning over $1 million overseas, although there are news stories of Chaplin's films racking up $1 million in Britain.
• The Birth of a Nation was released during World War 1 when many of the foreign markets were inaccessible. It actually doubled its earnings during the 1920s.

So the only American film that was quantifiably and demonstrably bigger was Ben-Hur which was released a decade later. Betty Logan (talk) 19:30, 2 November 2016 (UTC)