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A close study of the less well known and far less available dramatic version of the novel, adapted by Dixon and produced in 1906,' reveals that the film closely parallels Dixon's theatrical treatment borrowing heavily from the play for much of the second half of the film, filling in exposition from the novel for the earlier sections, and in general, using Dixon's material more thoroughly than is usually believed.2 The similarity in both subject matter and dramatic structure between Griffith's film and Dixon's play indicates that, allowing for the differences between the two media, Griffith produced a close adaptation rather than a wholly original work and that Griffith was much less venturesome in subject matter or innovative in narrative technique than is usually thought. Griffith was certainly an innovative filmmaker and a movie industry pioneer, but he fostered a myth that he was also the primary author of his movies, structuring from film instincts honed during his Biograph years and transforming his films' original sources so thoroughly that he was unencumbered by his received material.

When D.W. Griffith began work on what was to become The Birth of a Nation, he had two versions of Thomas Dixon's The Clansman from which to draw his own narrative ideas. Analyses of Griffith's narrative technique have often focused on the degree to which Griffith used or discarded material drawn from The Clansman, particularly in its popular novel form published in 19OS. Because Griffith's film varies widely from Dixon's novel, such an analysis seems to show that Griffith only relied on Dixon for the outlines of his story, and that in all substantive ways he was the author of the film, relying as much on his own childhood stories and research as he did on Dixon. Such a comparison is misleading, however. A close study of the less well known and far less available dramatic version of the novel, adapted by Dixon and produced in 1906,' reveals that the film closely parallels Dixon's theatrical treatment borrowing heavily from the play for much of the second half of the film, filling in exposition from the novel for the earlier sections, and in general, using Dixon's material more thoroughly than is usually believed.2 The similarity in both subject matter and dramatic structure between Griffith's film and Dixon's play indicates that, allowing for the differences between the two media, Griffith produced a close adaptation rather than a wholly original work and that Griffith was much less venturesome in subject matter or innovative in narrative technique than is usually thought.

The centrality of Dixon's play to Griffith's adaptation also contradicts the general understanding of Griffith's working method. Griffith was certainly an innovative filmmaker and a movie industry pioneer, but he fostered a myth that he was also the primary author of his movies, structuring from film instincts honed during his Biograph years and transforming his films' original sources so thoroughly that he was unencumbered by his received material. He stated that he never worked from a shooting script and liked to give the impression that his films simply developed as he went along, first in his head, then on the set, and finally in the editing room. Richard Schickel, in his recent biography D.W. Griffith: An American Life,3 takes exception to this picture of Griffith, pointing out that shooting scripts do exist for some of his films. The impression persists, however, of Griffith as the improvising pioneer finding his way by trial and error.

Although no shooting script exists for Birth apart from a few notes scribbled on the back of a piece of historical research done for the film, that Griffith was aware of the content of the play can be demonstrated both by how closely he followed the structure of Dixon's play and by the presence in the film of narrative details that can only be found in the theatrical adaptation. The contention is further supported by the presence of a copy of Dixon's play in the Griffith Collection of material in the Museum of Modem Art.

Griffith remained faithful to his source material to a suprising degree. His first preference seems always to have been for the structure, incident, and characters drawn from the play. When, for whatever reason, the play was unsatisfactory or incomplete, he turned back to the novel for material. Griffith often exploited the cinematic possibilities of the story far beyond what Dixon had written in his novel or could do on the stage. But only where Dixon provided no alternative did Griffith insert completely original incidents. That Griffith was heavily indebted to another source for his material might have seemed to him to diminish his creative achievement when it actually demonstates a profound understanding of his medium more impressive than any intuitive knowledge. Griffith understood the differences among literary, theatrical, and cinematic media, and while he followed the structure and material of the original, he enhanced their effectiveness by emphasizing their visual and emotional appeal. These changes did not alter the focus of the story, however. For instance, he may have begun his story at an earlier chronological point than either the novel or the play, but by doing so, he simply eliminated the need for lengthy exposition rather than changing the intent of the narrative itself. A more detailed comparison between Dixon and Griffith's works not only demonstrates the parallels but also illuminates Griffith's approach to film adaptation, his understanding of the powers of the film as a medium, and allows for a more informed assessment of his achievement.

While they differ in some ways, in both novel and play, Dixon told the story of Reconstruction through the Cameron and Stoneman families. Ben Cameron and Elsie Stoneman, along with Phil Stoneman and Margaret Cameron in the novel, are the lovers that bind the story together. They are separated by the tragedy of the war and Northern misconceptions about the black character. Their ultimate reconciliation embodies the reconciliation of the country, the birth of a nation. In both, the South, represented by the Camerons, has been beaten down by war and is threatened by the Northern imposed advancement of the blacks, represented by Austin Stoneman, which unleashes not merely black power but black desire for white women as well. Ben Cameron responds to the threat by organizing the Klan. When a white woman is killed, the Klan retaliates by catching and executing those responsible. The Klan moves to disarm the blacks, and Stoneman responds by arresting Ben, suspending legal procedures, and calling in more troops. When Stoneman's own child (Phil in the novel and Elsie in the play) is finally saved by Ben and the Klan, Stoneman has a change of heart, gives his blessing to his children's matches, and withdraws his support from the black cause. The South is saved.

Although novel and play adaptation tell the same story, they differ in some noteworthy ways. First, the novel begins at an earlier chronological point. Book One covers Ben's convalesence in Washington and includes the retelling of his war experiences, his growing love affair with Elsie, and Lincoln's assassination. Book Two deals with Stoneman's attempt to impose his will on the South and to impeach Andrew Johnson. Only in Books Three and Four does the action shift to Piedmont, South Carolina, the home of the Camerons. The play takes place entirely in Piedmont, does not begin until 1867, and covers the preceding action as exposition. second, when the action does reach Piedmont, the play and novel diverge, the novel emphasizing the political development of the Klan and the brotherhood of Ben Cameron and Phil Stoneman, where the play concentrates on the love story of Ben and Elsie. Dixon deletes the love story of Margaret and Phil from the play. Third, in the novel there is a second Southern family, the Lenoirs, mother and daughter Marion. They are raped one night by Gus, a former slave of the Camerons, and his companions. Rather than allow their stain to be known, at dawn mother and daughter go to lover's leap and throw themselves off the cliff passing "through the opal gates of death." In the play the rape and suicide of the Lenoirs is replaced by the chase and panicked suicide of a young girl named Flora, a character borrowed from an earlier Dixon novel, The Leopard's Spots.

Although Griffith tells an elongated form of the same story as Dixon, it is often discussed as if it were two Films: the first dealing with the war and the second dealing with Reconstruction. To some extent, this reflects the variety of Griffith's sources. The first quarter of the film, which establishes the two families and their characteristics prior to the war, is in keeping with the backgrounds that Dixon provides for his characters, although it is almost all Griffith's invention. For the second quarter, from the war through Lincoln's assassination, Griffith took the first act exposition from the play and expanded it. For the incidents, he turned to the novel, where this period is handled in great detail. The latter half of the film, the section covering Reconstruction beginning with Stoneman's arrival in Piedmont, is primarily based on the play, with the insertion of some elements from the novel, such as the restoration of the Phil and Margaret subplot.

However different they may seem, the film's sections form a closely interdependent narrative, constructed so that they build to the action of Dixon's play. The first section of Birth opens with scenes of the slave trade and early abolition meetings. Griffith inserts historic tableaux throughout the film, often complemented by references to specific histories to validate their accuracy. The tableaux have little to do with the story of the Camerons and Stonemans, but they do add a scope to the story and place it in a larger historical context. Most of the tableaux are suggested by passages from Dixon, where they had much the same purpose: to give the action a wider meaning by making the characters only specific examples of a general situation. These first scenes, suggested by a discussion of the origins of slavery in the novel, establish that the larger issue of slavery will dominate the film.6

Griffith then establishes the central characters. Griffith's characters usually conform to Dixon's descriptions, down to such details as Stoneman's wig and club foot. The major alterations are to add the younger sons, to establish an early connection between the families, and to show what the characters and their world were like before the war devastated their lives. Griffith looks for visual effects to broaden the scope of his story. Whereas in Dixon, basic racial and sectional differences are the subject of debates, Griffith shows through small scenes what the antebellum South was like, and contrasts the relationship between Northerner and Southerner and black and white in both places. The changes are all within the spirit of Dixon's work, but deepen the emotional effect. In Dixon, both Cameron and Stoneman lose other children in the war, but for Stoneman's admission that he dug up a Confederate soldier buried on his farm, these have occurred in the past and are anonymous. In the film the younger brothers are well-established realities to whose deaths the audience can easily relate. Ben's devotion to Elsie's portrait in the first section of the film makes their meeting and eventual union feel predestined and much more moving.

The two families are thus more than merely the subject of the plot; they form the very basis of Griffith's editing technique. Sustaining the narrative continuity of such a long film was a great risk in an industry that was accustomed to films of one or two reels. Griffith very carefully establishes and maintains clear story connections. Generally, he chooses to work on the broadest possible family canvas, while keeping the larger political movements restricted to tableaux, except when they intersect the two families. In scenes of continuous action or in the cross-cutting in ride to the rescue sequences, this is relatively simple. But when he jumps over space and time, he invariably tries to find some family connection to motivate the shift. From the boys dying on the battlefield, he shifts to the effect of the deaths on those at home. The death of one of the Cameron children justifies his showing the burning of Atlanta. Letters, thoughts, pictures, or prayers in one scene motivate shifts to another location. A large cast of related characters thus gives Griffith greather opportunity for presenting different aspects of the conflict. His decision to use Phil and Margaret in the film serves this purpose. It ties the families more closely together, and even though Dixon features Phil more prominently, they provide Griffith with a second strong couple for his double rescue at the end of the film.

With the second quarter of the film, Griffith moves more firmly into Dixon's material and chronology. Time jumps two and a half years, and through letters and pictures, Griffith sketches desperate situations both at home and at the front. The emphasis is on the Camerons, and the Stonemans are only shown when they meet the Camerons on the battlefield, such as when the two younger sons die in each other's arms or when Phil saves Ben.

The film's first ride to the rescue takes place early in this section when the Camerons are attacked and cornered by a group of black guerillas led by white scalawag officers, but are saved by a passing troop of Confederate soldiers. Although the specific incident does not occur in the book, the general outlines are consistent with Dixon's Reconstruction outrages that justify the formation of the Klan. It is also necessitated by Griffith's elongation of the Cameron story. Since Griffith begins at an earlier point, he must also establish his central theme, the underlying danger of uncontrolled blacks, earlier.

The battle sequences follow the fates of the Camerons. The first son dies, in the arms of his Stoneman friend. The second dies in the defense of Atlanta. This allows Griffith to present S Herman's army and the burning of the city. A much longer sequence than either of the vignettes is a mini-drama of Ben's battlefield valor. This story is taken directly from a detailed two-page description in the novel, but Griffith far outstrips the impact of the original, making it one of the most memorable sequences in the film. Griffith connects the incident to the tattered condition of the Southern forces by adding the motivation that Ben's attack is a diversionary move to cover an attempt to save a supply train that has been cut off. Griffith has little interest in the supply train story; however, he drops it once Ben and Phil have been introduced. As a distinct unit, the sequence has all the shape and technique of many of Griffith's two-reel biograph films.

Griffith uses material detailed in the novel for the entire Washington sequence: Ben's convalesence, his love affair with Elsie, his mother's efforts to save him from execution as a guerilla, and Lincoln's assassination. Dixon left them out of the compressed action of the play, which only refers back to these incidents, particularly to Elsie caring for Ben, but they allow Griffith to slowly develop his characters and their relationships. They are particularly useful in extending the range of the drama, since Lincoln can logically be drawn into the action when Mrs. Cameron goes to see him. Griffith uses even the small details Dixon provides, such as Elsie playing the banjo. Mrs. Cameron's demanding that the guard at the hospital allow her to see Ben and the guard's sympathy with her, or of Lincoln's refusing to give a pardon just before he grants Mrs. Cameron her request.

The final section of this part of the film, Stoneman's conflict with Lincoln and Lincoln's assassination, are also based in the novel and are particularly convenient for Griffith because they allow him to introduce national events from the perspective of the participants of his story. Following Dixon, the assassination is seen through the eyes of Phil and Elsie, who are in the audience.

Griffith places Dixon's next sequence, Stoneman's plans for subjugating the South, in the second half of his film. Although it takes place in Washington, it is actually the immediate cause of the action of the Piedmont story and provides a bridge between the material in each half of the film. Here, for the first time, Silas Lynch is introduced as a protege of Stoneman who encourages Lynch in his ambitions. Stoneman's relationship with his mulatto mistress, Lydia Brown, and his humiliation of Sumner are used to underline the decadence and malevolence of Stoneman's goals. Griffith departs from the novel by discarding Stoneman's attempt to impeach Andrew Johnson, probably because although Stoneman provides a connection to the impeachment, the incident itself is unrelated to the fates of the Camerons. But Griffith does preserve Lydia Brown as a motivating force for Stoneman's actions. Brown disappears once the action shifts south and does not even appear as a character in the play. By keeping the action in Washington and emphasizing Lydia's control over Stoneman, his sexual motivation for his public policies is reinforced. It is one of the awkwardnesses of the novel that Dixon abandons this seemingly important character in the middle of his story, although her absence does make Stoneman's eventual conversion easier. Griffith merely accepts the character and her abrupt exit as part of his inherited material and makes no attempt to integrate her more fully into the story.

With the move to Piedmont, the film begins to draw directly on material covered by the action of Dixon's play. The first section shows the blacks gaining and abusing elective power. Griffith uses incidents from the play in a series of short scenes which establish the danger the ignorant blacks and their white and black leaders pose to the South and themselves. Against this background, he intercuts scenes showing the attempts by the white Southerners to rebuild their lives. Action from the play dominates, although some incidents are drawn from the novel. Phil and Margaret, for instance, appear only in the novel. Other material, such as the character of Flora, appears only in the play. Of the two, the Flora story is much more important to the development of the action since it provides the crisis in the next section and directly accounts for the Klan's movement against the blacks. Altering his received material to suit his medium and unrestricted by one location or the continuous time constraints of stage action, Griffith shifts time and place whenever a scene changes.

Sometimes changes have been made for the sake of simplicity. Dixon's work contains complicated descriptions of Southern improverishment through taxation, confiscation, and auction which often require detailed explanation. Griffith uses these where he can, but also substitutes simple scenes that have a strong visual impact, such as the violent guerrilla attack in the war section or the pathetic scenes showing Southern poverty which begin during the war section. In the play, for instance, at the end of the first act. Lynch and Stoneman discuss enlisting Ben as a leader for their cause. This is followed by a long discussion about black equality between Stoneman and Ben, which is interrupted when Ben objects to Lynch's presence in the house. In the film, this is simplified to Stoneman's wanting Ben to shake hands with Lynch and Ben refusing. Stoneman glowers and Lynch pretends humility. Many incidents and characters in the play are deleted altogether. The character of the carpetbagger Shrimp is eliminated, although he appears in the background. While this change simplifies the action, it has the added effect of shifting greater focus onto Lynch as the ambitious elected official and to Stoneman as his important supporter. Although he is a powerful figure. Stoneman is much less forceful in the film than he was in the play or novel. As the plot of the film progresses. Lynch gradually replaces Stoneman as the major antagonist.

Even with changes, elisions, and simplifications, the overall structure and intent of Dixon's first act remains intact. The Stonemans and Camerons are entwined in affairs of love and politics. The Southerners are continually degraded by a series of political, social, and moral outrages perpetrated by the recently empowered blacks encouraged by their white sponsors. The love affair between North and South, Phil and Margaret, as well as Ben and Elsie, is halted by the divisions of war and racial theories, and the black desire for white women appears both as a thematic issue and as a part of the dramatic conflict, with Lynch wanting Elsie, and the black renegade Gus wanting the innocent Flora.

Griffith discards most of the second act of the play in which the Cameron house is auctioned off for taxes and, having eliminated the Lenoirs, he has also eliminated the loss of their house for taxes. What few incidents Griffith finds useful, he incorporates into other places in the film.7

What is incorporated sequentially from the play is Griffith's version of the rise of the Klan. For Dixon, the Klan is a national idea that Ben brings to Piedmont. Griffith's Klan is more personal, completely local, and visually simple. Instead of copying the idea of the Klan from General Forrest and arguing over the idea of the Klan with his father as Dixon has him do, Ben, distraught because Lynch has prevented him from chasing Gus away from his door and because he is legally powerless to protect his home, discovers that black children are easily scared by figures in white sheets. In the next shot, the besheeted Klan is riding.

The next portion of the film follows the action of the first scene of the third act of the play. It is devoted to two lines of action: Flora's death and Ben and Elsie's separation because of the Klan. Freed from the stage constraints of a single setting, Griffith is able to build up Flora's death considerably by showing offstage as well as onstage action. In almost every detail, Griffith follows the action or description in the play: from Flora's love of chipmunks, to Gus's ambivalence about his intentions towards Flora, to her throwing herself off the cliff out of fear. Griffith even goes back to the novel for the image of Flora passing "through the opal gates of death." The only actual change in the story is the immediate addition of Ben searching for her, which enhances the suspense, and of Ben reaching her before she dies, thus eliminating the need for the hypnotism that Dr. Cameron uses in the play to get the story oui of Gus. Griffith uses Dixon's trial scene in the Klan's cave, "in the halls of the invisible empire" as the title card puts it, but compresses the action considerably since even with the strong visual impact of the Klan in full regalia, the play version is a static courtroom scene with long accounts of offstage action. Although the film retains the trappings of a trial, because Flora identified Gus before she died, in this scene it is only necessary for Ben to unmask and accuse him in her name. As in the play, Gus's body is dumped at Lynch's door.

If Griffith has exploited some cinematic possibilities up to this point, it is in the last portion of the film where the differences between the media and Griffith's handling of them become most apparent. The basic structure of film and play are (he same. The issues have come to crisis for both sides. The blacks move to hunt down the Klan, which is itself gathering to disarm the blacks. Attempting to save her loved ones, Elsie is trapped by Lynch, and Stoneman too becomes Lynch's prisoner. At the last moment, the Klan arrives, preventing death and miscegenation. In the play, the last act begins with Stoneman's attempt to try Ben, an attempt that is thwarted by the refusal of both the newly-cowed blacks and of the stalwart Elsie to testify against him. Griffith discards the visually static trial scene and heightens the action by developing a strong second plot line: Dr. Cameron's arrest, escape, and entrapment in the cabin. By using Phil and Margaret to save Dr. Cameron, Griffith puts all the major characters in danger. He is then able to double the excitement of the ending with two rides to the rescue. He outstrips the theatre's ability to present a range of action by using all of his cross-cutting techniques to build excitement and suspense. Cutting between danger and rescue was already out of the range of most theatrical production, but balancing two such sequences simultaneously along with scenes of the chaos in the town was a triumph of the cinema's capabilities and of Griffith's virtuosity. It is also the Final justification of the inclusion of Margaret and Phil in the story.

Just as he did in the earlier portions of the film, in the climactic sections, Griffith relied on the play for both small detail and large structure. Although Elsie is bound and gagged in both, in the TiIm, Stoneman faints and is much more helpless than in the play where he threatens to shoot in the air, which will bring in the Klan but cause all of their deaths. In the film Griffith uses the "better death than miscegenation" idea but shifts it to the cabin where the women will be clubbed (there are no bullets left) rather than be allowed to fall into the hands of the attacking black troops. In both play and TiIm, the rescue of the Stonemans by Ben and the Klan brings Elsie and Ben back together with Stoneman's blessing. Where the play ends with Stoneman's change of heart and promise to withdraw the Federal troops, the TiIm reinforces the subsititution of Lynch for Stoneman as the principal antagonist and ends with the capture of Lynch, the triumph of the Klan, the return of the blacks to their cabins, the next election, and the union of both sets of lovers.

The degree to which Griffith relied on Dixon's play rather than his novel is most clear at this point. And while play and film are quite similar, they differ widely from the final book of the novel which focuses on Stoneman's attempt to have Ben courtmartialed and killed. Phil takes Ben's place in jail and only Ben and the Klan's arrival saves Stoneman from unknowingly having his son executed. Lynch and Elsie are reduced to secondary characters, and Elsie is never threatened with rape or marriage.

In part, the handling of the ending and the way in which Griffith has diminished the importance of Stoneman as the major antagonist is symptomatic of his approach to screen action. On a plot level, since Lynch has become the threatening force, once he is defeated and the Klan is triumphant, there is no real barrier to Elsie and Ben. But this shift is also a reflection of the simplification that Griffith makes of the issues of the play. Throughout, Griffith has localized the conflicts. Once he moves to Piedmont, it becomes a personalized struggle for local power with a small number of well-known participants rather than a clash of state or national forces. Even with a local focus, Griffith simplifies the issues further into the single one of sexual fear, rather than trying to delve into the intricacies of Reconstruction tax law. Since Griffith has not concerned himself with legalities, the scenes of Klan triumph are sufficient to resolve the conflict. For Dixon, Stoneman is essential as a powerfully placed figure who can affect changes on the national level. For Griffith, since these issues are less important, it is logical that Lynch be the more threatening villain because the danger he represents is more immediate and more basic.

A desire for the maximum dramatic impact seems to have been the overriding reason for many of the choices Griffith makes in his adaptation. Griffith's understanding of dramatic structure was not entirely serendipitous. Before becoming a film director, Griffith's first love had been the stage. For many years an itinerate actor and aspiring playwright, at one point he had even acted for Dixon. In the theatre he learned about dramatic values with heroes, and villains and strong threats playing on basic fears. He had also learned how to build and effect sympathy and how to root his drama in the small details of everyday life. In his early films he had perfected the cinematic techniques for enhancing these values. Cross-cutting could build suspense and the photographic nature of film could exploit the surfaces of everyday reality in ways the theatre had not been able to fully achieve even at its best. When Griffith moved on to longer films, the ambitions were greater but the techniques were the same. He achieves complexity in Birth not through greater depth of thought but rather through the detail that greater length allowed him. In its thematic structure, the film is as simple as his short films. It is in his ability to create and sustain his narrative structures that Griffith makes great advances in technique. These advances can best be seen through Griffith's adaptation choices. He creates a clear line of action in the film, choosing to emphasize elements in Dixon's work that will provide a clear continuity based in character.

Ironically, while an analysis of Griffith's method demonstrates his debt to Dixon, it simultaneously reveals him to be a pioneer in a different sense, as the developer of the elements of screen adaptation that would become the standard technique in the film industry. Film narrative, as Griffith developed it, was primarily an action medium with a strong emotional appeal but with limited intellectual depth. In transferring The Clansman, Griffith strengthened the power and effectiveness of the original material by finding the cinematic form for the play's theatre vocabulary. He shortened scenes, substituting visual vignettes for longer theatrical discussions and replacing the trials, auctions, and arguments that dominate the play with character conflicts that simplify the issues but drive home similar thematic ideas by more emotional means. He used an early point of attack in place of long narrative scenes of exposition, showing rather than narrating those elements which bring the characters to crisis. He found active parallels to take the place of dialogue, and opened up the action, particularly in scenes of rising action, by intercutting his basic narrative with what had been scenes of offstage action. His substitutions helped tighten the scenic structure holding the film together, even though it spans a much longer historic period than the play.

In constructing his narrative, Griffith moved the action towards the climaxes Dixon had distilled in his own theatrical adaptation. In order to give substance to a silent play, he needed cinematic substitutions for the more compact and verbal dramatic exposition. He may have mined the material in Dixon's novel, and his techniques of juxtaposing shots and editing, as Eisenstein has pointed out,8 may have followed the writing techniques of a Dickens novel, but finally all the material and techniques have been used to bring visual substance to the story Dixon presented on the stage. If Griffith was not quite the improvising cinematic inventor that he claimed, his knowledge of both theatre and film made him the perfect individual to shape a new form of drama rooted in the older stage form. The Birth of a Nation may be an adaptation rather than a largely original work, but in adapting the play, Griffith greatly extended the range and ambition of the cinema. An adaptation of this size was in itself a great leap of faith, and the result far outshadowed the conventional melodrama of the now largely forgotten original. The effectiveness by which Birth overwhelmed The Clansman in its ability to achieve emotional effects is a distillation of the process by which the cinema eclipsed the stage as a popular medium and by which the cinema, using the tools of the drama, developed it own aesthetic.9