One of the most openly racist movies ever made: it also brought bad technical consequences

Rating: 3/10 (24 August 2015)

It could be only an important film in the history of motion pictures that had a too large extent, but it is something much worse: it is one of the most openly racist movies ever made. The ridiculous "black" makeup on white actors, the racist words such as "negro" and the caricature-like way black characters talk can be viewed since the beginning. Though, the second part of the film, about reconstruction after civil war, is the direst. While black representatives are portrayed as savages with no respect, as beastly cowards, whites are shown as poor victims of the majority. D. G. Griffith was a talented director and was able to make some cute or funny short scenes and beautifully filmed footage, besides his importance in the narrative innovation. Though, his social and political views are repulsive. In a country where black people did not have even de jure the same rights as the whites until some decades later, narrating history as if the role of the two races had been the reverse is simply dishonest. The same may be told about calling equal rights as "vicious doctrines", or calling Ku Kux Klan as "the organization that saved the South from the anarchy of black rule", or talking about "defence of Aryan birthright" (Nazi Germany has deserved so much concern in USA but a similar speech inside the country, although criticized, strangely does not seem to have called so much attention). The indefensible antipathy of the director for the legalization of inter-racial marriage is advocated through the confusion between marriage proposal and rape menace, racial prejudice and honor, and the ridiculous plot of a forced marriage attempt (some critics pledge not to make a confusion between politics and artistic work, but how to ignore the awful screenplay and makeup?). Don't worry, "helpless" white "victims" of the black "mob" "abuse" after the end of slavery: KKK masked vigilantes are there to save the day and "make the negroes know their proper place" in Grifitth's epic. Disgusting and unbearable.