The Birth of a Nation

Rating: 4/10 (10 October 2004)

It's a tough one. How does one look at this film and make a cinematic critique?
You have here the first feature film. It is supposed to be the film everybody who loves cinema goes out and buys as it was the film that ignited the future of film making as we know it!
But it's so horrendously racist it's untrue! I find it very hard to admire well placed shots of by Griffith of the Ku Klux Klan riding on there horses to save the white man from the 'evil minority' ... In that respect "Birth of a Nation" is disgusting.
Sad but true... and then there's the first talkie "The Jazz Singer" ... the cycle continues.
Shame.