better than "Gone with the wind"

Rating: 10/10 (27 October 2001)

"A piece of racist trash"? "A disgrace"? Come on, people, what are you thinking of?
This is a good example of a movie that has had a very bad press it doesn't deserve. It is true the film is showing the Civil War and the Reconstruction from a very unique pespective, but that is not a sin. Actually, art is precisely about that: about showing YOUR perspective, not THE official perspective.
And if we go to the racist details, OK, it is racist... but no more than 90 percent of Westerns, almost all American movies about war (against Germany or Japan or Vietnam), or "Gone with the wind" (which also praises the KKK and it shows black people as good servants and bad free citizens).
The difference with any other racist artwork is, of course, that this is the best of the best. The cinematography is a miracle. The acting, in spite of some few really bad stereotypes, is generally moving: think, for example, of the scene when the "Little Colonel" returns home or the accident/suicide of his younger sister. Or Lincoln's assassination . These are immortal, unforgettable scenes.
Actually, the intemporal quality of this film can be easily proved by how fun and absorbing it still can be. The first time I heard about a 3 hour long, black and white, silent movie, I thought an appointment with my dentist would be better that that. It's the problem with filmic conventions that are not valid anymore: even Keaton's or Chaplin's movies sometimes turn to be really boring. Not "The birth of a nation". At the end, I just wanted to see a third part for this story.