The spring from which the glory of the cinema flows

Rating: 10/10 (1 December 2003)

The glory of 'Birth of a Nation' is plain to see for anyone with open eyes and mind. To fully appreciate it, it is necessary to realise the exceptionally primitive level of film grammar at the time.
Before BOAN, 'expression' in the cinema was almost entirely restricted to grotesque over-acting. 'Structure' didn't exist. 'Mise en scene' was haphazard and not recognised as a part of the film-maker's art. Above all, Griffith introduced the concept of scale into the cinema, whereby it (the cinema) could represent a world that stretched in a continuum from the food on a dinner plate to the movement of great armies.
That is its achievement - a massive one by ANY comparison, and I cannot think of a single work of art in any art form - save perhaps Homer's Illiad - that has single-handedly defined the medium so profoundly as this.
What is so tragic, in a modern context is that this towering work has become a punch-bag for the ignorant and prejudiced, whose repellent moral and political certainties will, in fifty or a hundred or five hundred or a thousand years be consigned to the dustbin of history while this great masterpiece will shine as a beacon as long as our species appreciates the glory of its cultural apogee - CINEMA!!!