Not The Birth of a nation

Rating: 1/10 (14 May 2006)

I have seen Birth of a Nation twice. I had heard whispers about it and the racist filmmaker DW Griffiths for many years. In my youth the film was let us say politely a little too far to the right to be shown on TV's Big Show: the PM movie that came on after school.
Perhaps the first feature film Birth of a Nation tracks two families separated by the faction they supported in the Civil War. There are fantastic battle scenes of Sheridan's advance through the Shenandoah valley. And of course had DW Griffiths ended the movie with the Rebel collapse and reconciliation of the opposing factions, this film would be regarded as a masterpiece. Regrettably DW continued the story into reconstruction and presented an extreme Southronist version.
In fairness to DW it must have seemed to the Southernors who rebelled to guarantee the continuation of the peculiar institution that the world had turned upside down when Southron arms failed and the fate of the Lost Cause was sealed. The Democratic president the Southern carpetbagger to New Jersey Woodrow Wilson agreed and called this film "History written with electricity." By all accounts the film was out of step even in the times it was issued.
The film deserves a **** 1 **** and should be consigned to the deep.
The defeat of the South in 1865 was not the birth of the nation. The nation was already 89 years old in 1865. If there is any tears to be shed for lost films they all belong to Robert Goldstein who produced the suppressed film The Spirit of 76, about the true Birth of the Nation.