Masterful Storytelling

Rating: 10/10 (4 July 2004)

Griffith made "The Birth of a Nation" at the outset of World War One. It is the product of a bygone age and should be viewed as such.
The arguments about racism spewed upon this film by so many who should know better are completely out of place. They are irrelevant. When this film was made racism was the law.
Let's bear in mind that for something like two centuries Americans were raised to view slavery as something perfectly normal. It was part of everyday life and it was encouraged. It was the law of the land and God's will. This is the very definition of a racist nation and this is the America that David Wark Griffith inherited. This was his reality.
We should acknowledge that Griffith was a sophisticated man. His peers respected him and regarded him highly. At worst he was no more racist than the majority of Americans of his time. Probably much less so. His next feature film, Intolerance, is a testament to that.
However, we have to appreciate that the generations preceding him viewed blacks as inferior to whites. A sub-species that could be trained to do labour. They were literally property, something akin to a horse but with the power of speech. That blacks might be human beings equally endowed with God's blessings as whites, was a concept many Americans simply could not grasp. It is this historical view that is presented in the film.
Griffith masterfully captures the contempt and rage of Southerners over the freeing of their slaves. They did not see it as a good thing and they could not accept it. Their social order was turned upside down by the do-gooders of the North. It was viewed as a form of humiliation imposed upon them. That Southerners would revere the Ku Klux Klan follows logically. The Klan itself springs naturally from this mindset. This is the film's perspective. If you can't understand that, then this film is not for you.
If you hate this movie because of its racism then you hate America because that's what it was like at the time. It is a genuine presentation of the Civil War from people who were only one generation removed from it. Griffith's own father participated in the war and here Griffith is sincerely telling his version of the truth.
Racism aside, I was mesmerized by this film. It is one of the finest I've ever seen. It held me captive from beginning to end. From an historical standpoint the film is a window into a world that vanished long ago. That Griffith was able to pull this off during the earliest days of cinema is indicative of the enormity of his talents. "The Birth of a Nation" isn't "a" film; it is "the" film. This is the granddaddy of them all. It is an early masterpiece of such magnitude that it altered the cinematic landscape.