What Is Birth Of A Nation?

The Birth of a Nation is a silent film directed by D.W. Griffith and was released on February 8th, 1915. Based on Thomas Dixon's novel "The Clansman", the movie depicts the South in the aftermath of the Civil War. Depressed that his homeland is now under the control of lazy, violent, uppity blacks and their white sympathizers, Ben Cameron (the film's protagonist) gathers like-minded individuals and together, they form the Ku Klux Klan. When Cameron's sister jumps to her death rather than be raped by a renegade slave, the Klan wages war on the new government and restores order to the South.

The film is important in American history as it is almost solely responsible for the rise of the second era of the Ku Klux Klan. Anticipating liberal criticism, Griffith arranged a White House screening and President Woodrow Wilson reviewed the film as "history written with lightening." As the film (which grossed more income than any other silent film in history) depicted Klansmen as noble defenders of Christianity and white womanhood, the Klan's influence began to grow as the film's popularity increased. In the 1920s, over 15% of the nation's eligible voting population were members of the Ku Klux Klan!

BIRTH OF A NATION is recognized as a landmark of American (if not world) cinema.  In many ways, it was one of the first feature-length narrative films as we know it.  D.W. Griffith, the director, established many film techniques that we take for granted today, including the use of close-ups to heighten drama and cross-cutting between two scenes to create suspense.  BIRTH OF A NATION actually has one of the first scenes of men on horseback coming to rescue a small band of people besieged by attackers.

However, as revelation notes above, it is an incredibly racist piece of work.  For example, the "men on horseback" are not members of the Cavalry; they're the Klan.  And blacks are demonized to an incredible degree.

This is one of those cases in which you sort of have to separate the artistry that went into the creation of the work from the MESSAGE of the work.  That's tricky to do, and I certainly sympathize with the people who CAN'T separate them.