The Fall of a Nation

original title:
The Fall of a Nation
other titles:
(Untergang einer Nation)
country / year of production:
original length:
black/white
premiere:
USA: 6 June 1916
based on:
Thomas Dixon. The fall of a nation. New York: D. Appleton and company, 1916. 361 p.
film script:
producer:
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composer:
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plot synopsis:
In the United States public opinin is dominated by the anti-war activities of the Honorable Plato Barker and Reverend A. Cuthbert Pike. A ruthless millionaire, obsessed with the desire for power, secretly plots the invasion of the United States. A "European Confederated Army," headed by the Germans, lands on American shores and conquers the major cities. All attemps to appease the invading army the Reverend Pike greets them with kindness but is hilariously humiliated. The invaders commit a variety of atrocities on the upon the citizens, such as rounding up and executing such "undesirables" as aged Civil War veterans and innocent children, and torturing American women. Democracy and the American Way are saved by a courageous pro-war congressman, who in concert with a patriotic suffragette (who'd been a pacifist in the early portions of the film) raises a civilian army to vanquish the usurpers.
literature:
remarks:
Big box office hit, presented shortly after "Birth of a Nation". In "Fall of a Nation" pacifism is thoroughly discredited, suggesting that it is akin to disloyalty and cowardice.
Both films belong to the so-called "preparedness"-films meant to help prepare the American people for an up-coming war and making them attentive for eventual threats from foreign countries.

Silent movie in three acts and a prologue: Act 1, a nation falls. Act 2, The heel of the conquerer. Act 3, the uprising two years later.

Screenwriter Dixon is the author of the novel "The Clansman" on which D.W. Grifftith`s "Birth of a Nation" was based.
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