Groundbreaking and Hideous

Rating: 7/10 (18 August 2009)

It is difficult to rate a film that is both stylistically brilliant and ideologically repugnant. Griffith's classic is a thoroughly racist account of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction period; it is also a groundbreaking piece of early silent cinema.
Of course, at the time of its "birth," the US was indeed a profoundly racist nation; in addition to slavery, there was the genocide committed against Native Americans. It is sadly appropriate, then, that a film intended as a paean to national unity today constitutes a sober reminder of a more than shameful past. (And I haven't even mentioned the film's depiction of women...) Griffith's film had a huge influence on cinematographic storytelling and is certainly too important to dismiss - even if one somehow wishes one could.