The Birth of a Nation (1915)

I have no idea how to review The Birth of a Nation. On one hand it's one of the most important movies ever made. The level of technical achievement for a movie from 1915 is amazing. While director D.W. Griffith may not have invented film techniques like cross-cuts, close-ups and deep focus, he was certainly the first one to use them to such great affect. The Birth of a Nation features numerous scenes that still look modern almost 100 years after it was released. It's impossible to calculate the influence this film has had on the film industry. It also almost singlehandedly made full length motion pictures a viable commercial art form. The Birth of a Nation was the first blockbuster movie and proved that audiences were willing to sit through lengthy films as well as the shorter ones that were commonplace up to that point.

No matter how many positives there are to The Birth of a Nation, it's certainly not going to be a movie that everyone will want to see. For starters it's a three hour silent film. That's gotta be enough to turn off a giant percentage of modern viewers. Even beyond that lies the fact that The Birth of a Nation is one of the most racist movies ever made. Black people are generally depicted as power hungry savages who were ruining the post Civil War south until the "heroic" Ku Klux Klan put them in their proper place. The second half of the movie is pretty tough to watch (that's most of the highly visible racism takes place).

Ultimately The Birth of a Nation is a movie that needs to be seen by anyone with even a slight interest in film history. It's certainly not something I would suggest to the type of person who wants their movies to solely provide entertainment value. I'm giving it a perfect score because the film deserves it based on it's historical importance and influence. Even with a perfect score it's not a huge recommendation for most people. The ability to separate yourself emotionally from what you're seeing on-screen and view the film in it's historical context is very important for anyone looking to watch this uncomfortable masterpiece.

Historical Importance Rating: 5/5