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The Birth of a Nation

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Original title

The Birth of a Nation

Year

1915

Running time

190 min.

Country

United States

Director

D.W. Griffith

Screenwriter

D.W. Griffith, Frank E. Woods. Novel: Thomas F. Dixon Jr

Cast

Cinematography

G.W. Bitzer (B&W)

Producer

David W. Griffith Corp

Genre

Drama. War | Historical. 19th Century. American Civil War. Racism. Epic film. Silent Film

Synopsis

The most successful and artistically advanced film of its time, The Birth of a Nation has also sparked protests, riots, and divisiveness since its first release. The film tells the story of the Civil War and its aftermath, as seen through the eyes of two families. The Stonemans hail from the North, the Camerons from the South. When war breaks out, the Stonemans cast their lot with the Union, while the Camerons are loyal to Dixie. After the war, Ben Cameron, distressed that his beloved south is now under the rule of blacks and carpetbaggers, organizes several like-minded Southerners into a secret vigilante group called the Ku Klux Klan. When Cameron's beloved younger sister Flora leaps to her death rather than surrender to the lustful advances of renegade slave Gus, the Klan wages war on the new Northern-inspired government and ultimately restores "order" to the South. In the original prints, Griffith suggested that the black population be shipped to Liberia, citing Abraham Lincoln as the inspiration for this ethnic cleansing. Showings of Birth of a Nation were picketed and boycotted from the start.

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Rankings Position

#91 Best War Movies/War Film
#119 Best Silent Movies of all time

Critics' reviews

"It might be tempting to just try to forget about it and pretend like it didn’t happen (...) It’s, in a number of regards, a horrendously ugly film with an ugly history, but it’s our history, and it’s important to know it."

Ciara Wardlow: Film School Rejects
"Birth of a Nation wasn't just a seminal commercial spectacle but also a decisively original work of art"

Richard Brody: The New Yorker
"Birth of a Nation is a great epoch in picture making; it's great for pictures and it's great for the name and fame of David Wark Griffith"

Variety Staff: Variety
"Griffith's later films are unquestionably superior. But here, in a very real sense, is where the movies began, both as an art and as a business."

Dave Kehr: Chicago Tribune
"Griffith demonstrated to every filmmaker and moviegoer who followed him what a movie was, and what a movie could be"

Roger Ebert: Chicago Sun-Times
"The quasi-Victorian Griffith was in so many respects way ahead of his time even if his philosophy and mind-set could often be said to be behind it."

Derek Malcolm: The Guardian
"The Birth of a Nation has become a staple of any film studies course, for its excellent performances, thrilling action sequences and epic landscapes."

David Parkinson: Empire

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The Birth of a Nation

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