It’s 1915. Film is innovating, but some companies don’t believe that longer features are viable. Enter director D.W. Griffith, who with The Birth of a Nation, pushed the medium forward with a three-plus-hour historical drama that is often considered the first film masterpiece.

Featuring white Southerners as the heroes against uneducated, just-freed slaves, it is also undeniably racist and one of the most controversial films of all time.

What The Birth of a Nation offers casual movie fans who have always meant to watch classic movies: a pioneering example of early film full of impressive scale, technique, and talent; a deeply one-sided view of Reconstruction; an unironic triumphal scene with the KKK as the good guys; and a whole lot to wrestle with concerning the intersection of great filmmaking and deplorable themes.

Show Notes