The Goldfield news and weekly tribune. [volume] (Goldfield, Nev.) 1911-1947, 1916-05-27
THE GREAT FILM MASTERPIECE

The masterpiece of lin production, "The Birth of d
Nation" has been seen in Goldfield. Nobody who wit
messed it was disappointed. Many have asked, here and
elsewhere, why there are not more such pictures.
1t is unfortunate for producers, as we'll as for the pub
lie, that there are so few subjects around which great pic
lures like this can be developed. But a great theme does
not always imply the possibility of a great picture, even
when the talents of a Griffith can be enlisted.
There have been many adverse criticisms of this pic
ture, which from the standpoint of art constitute the high
est tribute. For judicious reasons it has not been shown in
many communities, through fear that some white man
might be so inflamed against the negro that he would COM
NIT violence against some unfortunate member of that
race. And this is quite conceivable.
But if a race is to be condemned because of the act
of an individual, then this indictment lies against the
white race and not the black. The white man who, in
the light of history and his own knowledge of the world,
will permit the story of Lynch, or even the renegade Gus,
to inflame him against all blacks to the point of violence,
has a sense of justice and a degree of tolerance more
dwarfed and shriveled than the spirit that moved the radi-
cal Stoneman. There is scope for this mans vengeance
among the members of his own superior race. There is
many a fond but observant white parent, versed in the
ways of the world, who would rather risk his innocent
and inexperienced daughter among the blacks of the
South than to risk her unguided and unguarded among
the members of his race in some OF its most highly civil
lied centers of population.
And in the final reckoning whose soul will be found
the blacklist. that of Gus, the uneducated, half-civihzed
creature of the black skin, whose deed IS the result OF an
untamed and british instinct. or the white lbertlne and
moral degenerate, reared in an atmosphere of refinement,
who sets his traps, and lays his bait, and follows and
lures his prev with the devilish cunning and PERSISTENCE
that only his higher intelligence makes possible? And
until we whites, as a race, succeed IN Graduating the
moral pervert of the white skin, let us not boast too
loudly of our racial. or at least Our moral, superiority,
while continuing to burn at the stake the rapist of the
black skin. Let us not overlook proportions in Our judg-
ment.
But this in an incident, only, of this great picture,
and its presentation was not improper. Dixon, the att
thor, and Griffith, the producer, have performed a great
national service, for it is not true that thew have con
tributed to the race hatred that already existed. while it is
true that they have brought a better understanding be-
tween the members of the dominant race who were long
divided bv issues that were sectional And probably no
other one production in literature or art has done so
much to give to the white man of the North the viewpoint
of the white man of the South, and vice versa. And in
this service they have brought a better understanding.
a closer union and a more strongly reunited nation.