This is the first silent film that really has some punch.

Rating: Null/10 (13 December 2002)

Lately I've been looking at silent films and find most of them disappointing. Not so with Birth of a Nation. Even today it hasn't lost it's punch. The war and crowd scenes are extremely well done for their age. However, the version I saw was only 104 minutes. I don't know how I'd feel about a much longer version.
I often read that the film is blatantly and intentionally racist. If the film tells the truth about the post-Lincoln "reconstuction" era, then I don't see how it can be accurately called racist. Unfortunately, American history courses skip over those ugly & best-forgotten years so I don't know how accurate the film is. I suspect that it is fairly accurate. We show films of German atrocities during the WW2 era, yet we don't say they are racist or anti-German. We can show films of British atrocities in Ireland and not call them anti-British, just the truth. ...Jim