The Birth of a Nation (1915)

Touches You

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

We can see how Griffith's mind works and how he seen the world. If today somebody make a movie that much racist doesnt matter how beatiful it is i wouldnt like it. For me nothing change its old movie or new movie. If i look as a part of history and how some of the people were thinking that time, its good source for that. He was racist and so many people as like him that time. All that civil war happened cause of that. His belive his mind shaped with those belives. If 1 Nazi director made a movie how they were right about the Jewish massacre i cant imagene no one even talk about how its piece of art. He has natural talent every picture on the movie looks like painting. Big war sceens and good acting. Still i cant give high point.

This film has some amazing visuals, and has some gripping moments, but it is let down by the elephant in the room, it is abhorrently racist, completely distorts history to fit its own narrative and glorifies a terrorist organisation. As such the rating is lower than it should be, because while every scene is well-made and some of them even iconic, when they're watched together, particularly in the second half, they form something that's unapologetically racist.

As a piece of technical film making, it is an amazing achievement for its time. As a piece of narrative storytelling, it is the most absurdly racist pile of garbage I've ever seen. I understand this movie's importance in the history of film, but as a balance between craft and subject matter, the putrid vile that is the latter undercuts the historical significance of the former.1/10...but that's just like, my opinion, man# Of Times Watched: Once

Disclaimer: I detest the KKK and White Supremacy This is possibly the greatest film ever made. While it is truly deplorable in what it condones and promotes, the propaganda aspect of the film is paralleled only by Triumph des Willens. Watching this movie in 2016 is a constant battle between feeling sympathetic towards the downtrodden white supremacist and remembering that that very same person that the movie is making you feel sympathetic towards is an absolutely terrible person. This movie makes me, a northern Jew, feel bad for the KKK at times. I have never before, and likely never will again, see a movie that I have so viscerally despised yet admired. It's enthralling and dangerous. It comes as no shock that this film helped renew the KKK after it came out. It's an important historical piece and also is possibly still the greatest film made over 100 years later. You need not be, and hopefully are not, a member of the KKK or a white supremacist to watch. Contextualizing it into modern history is something that is incredibly important.