The Birth of a Nation (1915)

Tonight's movie is one of the most controversial films in the history of cinema - D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation. This is the highest grossing silent film of all-time.

This movie is finally over.

At 3 hours and 7 minutes this is easily the longest silent film I've ever seen. That's about the only good thing I can say about this. While I do not inherently hate silent film (I thought Metropolis and Battleship Potemkin were both very good), I did hate this one.

The plot was incredibly boring. The first half of the movie basically told its own version of the Civil War and mentioned two families. It depicted the assassination of Lincoln and that was about it. The second half depicted Reconstruction and what most historians agree is an incredibly inaccurate look at the role of blacks during this time period.

While this film is incredibly controversial, I didn't think it was nearly as offensive as I was anticipating. I mean sure, it made it seem like all black people are incredibly evil and the KKK restored order to the post-war South. Still, it wasn't as violent as I expected or anything like that. It had some violence, but it wasn't too extreme.

I came into this expecting something with an incorrect look at history so that isn't the problem. The problem was the fact this film was so incredibly long and didn't really have a whole lot going on. If the films goal was to promote intolerance (which supposedly it isn't) then why not be even more hateful?

The film is almost 100 years old so I'll give it some credit and it did do some pioneering and was able to establish the fact that a feature film is over an hour, but it's still terrible.

The acting was fine I guess but I really have trouble judging acting in silent films. This stars, amongst others, Lillian Gish who is one of the most famous silent stars of all-time. Her character was well-acted but she didn't really stand out or anything.

Overall, while I realize this is an important piece of cinema history due to its controversial and influential nature, I still think this was awful. Every moment of it was like torture and I was very close to shutting it off a dozen or so times. This is the worst film I've reviewed so far even worse than Satan Met a Lady - much worse.

29/100
F

UP NEXT: A movie :haha: Maybe Rebel Without a Cause but who knows.