Magnificent and Repulsive

Rating: 8/10 (12 February 2014)

I'm not as cinematically sophisticated as most of the people who have reviewed this film, but I would like to make two points:
1. It's hard to believe this film is 100 years old. It flows like a modern movie from beginning to end. When viewing it, I made the initial adjustment to it being a silent film in a very short time, and after that, I was just caught up in the plot and flow. Griffith had no panning, no zooming and very few long shots or close ups. Practically every scene was done in medium shot — and obviously there's no dialog — but the film is put together so well that I hardly noticed its "old-fashioned" quality.
2. The film is unbelievably racist. Unbelievably! Hey, I knew it was racist before watching it, but I never never dreamed it would be as bad as it was. It makes a person's heart ache to think that people really were — and are — that bigoted. It is so tragic that such a brilliant, well-made film had such an obnoxious message.
Both of the above points are reasons for people to watch this movie today. In a nutshell, TBOAN shows that Griffith was a true genius as a film maker, but also how deeply entrenched the roots of racism are in American society.