Great, pioneering flick deserves better than detractors allow

Rating: 9/10 (23 July 1999)

This movie was an early victim of a concerted media attack. Over the years, people who have not seen it, and people who do not know anything about director D. W. Griffith, including modern-day columnists of know-nothing newspapers (such as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) have condemned it as "racist" or as something else ugly.
One must take into account the times in which it was made; and one must also realize that neither the movie nor the director in any way intended an attack on black Americans or even on Yankees.
As it would probably be foolish to accuse the director of "Natural Born Killers" of promoting murder, it is more than wrong to accuse Griffith of promoting racism.
The movie needs to be viewed as the entertainment spectacle it tried to be; and it needs to be viewed as having some tiny bit of historical veracity, if not in the details, at least in the overall picture.
There are scenes, such as the Little Colonel's homecoming, that never fail to bring tears to my eyes, as often as I see the film.
And there are other scenes that bring chuckles, however often I see them.
Griffith actually got better in his later films, but there are so many instances of genius in "Birth of a Nation," that this film is absolutely a classic.
Anyone who has not seen it just does not know the history of Hollywood.