lms had very little chance of showing a profit if they cost more than $15,000 to make, given the limited nature of their distribution. This cost factor limited the number of actors who could be used and the number of sets that could be built. The films were usually shot in less than a week, with the action often combined to two or three sets (Sampson 82-83).
Images of blacks in films in the period differed greatly in the all-black films from what was seen in mainstream films. Mainstream films took their cue from depictions such as that in The Birth of a Nation (1915), a massive film that also brought a stereotypical depiction of blacks in the South after the Civil War to audiences around the world. The film shows director D.W. Griffith's own bitterness at what he saw as excesses from the Reconstruction era, and in his view blacks were the tools of carpetbaggers and had to be put down for the protection of the white society. The means for achieving this was the creation of the Ku Klux Klan. Bogle points out that the response to this film was mixed but that it did have certain consequences in Hollywood itself. The black was seen as an out-and-out villain in the film, and this would not be possible again for many decades. Instead, blacks were relegated to comic roles to avoid controversy. Blacks now also had to be non-sexual after being depicted in this film as sexual predators, with the added stereotype that they were after young white virgins to destroy them (Bogle 16-17). Bogle also notes that in this film, all the screen types for blacks were introduced (Bogle 17). These types were all related to an image of the South from before and after the Civil War. The film defined the types of roles blacks could have in American films, and those roles would generally be comic as a way of undercutting the kinds of criticism generated by Birth of a Nation for its stereotypes and for its demonization of the black race. The film is ...