The Birth of a Nation (1915)

"The former enemies of North and South are united again in common defense of their Aryan birthright."

Modern cineastes regard The Birth of a Nation (1915) with derision otherwise reserved for Nazi propaganda. D.W. Griffith's masterwork can't be separated from either its innovations or its racism. A reviewer's only hope is assessing and balancing both aspects, a task this paean to white supremacy makes painfully complicated.
Benjamin Cameron (Henry B. Wathall), scion of South Carolina aristocrats, becomes a Colonel in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. He meets Elsie Stoneman (Lillian Gish), daughter of abolitionist Congressman Austin Stoneman (Ralph Lewis), whom he's long admired from afar. After war's end and Abraham Lincoln's (Joseph Henabery) assassination, the North uses troops, Republican carpetbaggers and freed blacks to crush the defeated South. Benjamin and friends decide to fight back by forming the Ku Klux Klan.
To be sure, The Birth of a Nation was neither Griffith's first feature (that's Judith of Bethulia) nor the first epic (Giovanni Pastrone's Cabiria (1914) takes the prize). Which doesn't diminish the importance of Nation, which synthesized a decade of painstakingly-honed techniques into a sweeping, operatic melodrama. In applying the brilliance employed in dozens of shorts to a three hour feature, Griffith produced the benchmark for all future movies.
Hence Nation's endurance. Griffith inundates viewers with now commonplace tricks, still strikingly effective. His cross-cutting montages infuse action scenes with incredible urgency, along with fade outs, expressive close-ups and melodramatic tension. Thus, silent dialogues and scenes of family life alternate seamlessly with historical tableaus depicting battles, Lee's surrender at Appomattox and Lincoln's death. For all its myriad faults, the movie's ambition is breathtaking.
What's likely to impress modern viewers most are Nation's action scenes. Griffith's biggest achievement is a rendering of the Battle of Petersburg, a cast of thousands rumble dwarfing Cecil B. De Mille and David Lean's creations. Griffith and photographer G.W. Bitzer enhance the effect with panoramic crane shots, massive set design and matte work. Griffith renders the burning of Atlanta with skillful matte work; he stages Sherman's March by panning from rapacious Yankees to horrified women watching from above. Griffith topped the movie with his even bigger Intolerance (1916), telling parallel stories across several centuries.
Griffith intends Nation as a national epic: after the Civil War, North and South forge a common union. Unfortunately, Griffith (adapting Thomas Dixon's The Clansman) couches this message as white supremacy. Modern viewers familiar with Tommy Lee Jones' acerbic Thaddeus Stevens in Lincoln will balk at Griffith's Stoneman, a bewigged, clubfooted Republican imposing despotism on the prostrate South from sheer malice. For Griffith, only a fool or a monster desires racial equality, and Stoneman is both.
While Nation's first act is largely innocuous, the second dives into the Dunning School of Confederate apologetics. Stoneman's henchmen establish a dictatorship, with freed blacks stuffing ballots and running wild. The state legislature becomes a zoo where black delegates drink and put bare feet on their desks, while soldiers leer at white women, whip pro-Southern blacks and tar and feather cowering whites. Griffith offers a sickening mirror image of the Reconstruction era, projecting white Southern crimes upon Northerners and freedmen. Having most black characters played by white actors in blackface makes it even more egregious.
This ahistorical nonsense is bad enough, but Griffith hits peak revulsion by couching their threat in sexual terms. Enter Silas Lynch (George Siegman), Stoneman's mulatto henchman who dreams not only of equality, but establishing a literal Black Empire. He's so disgusting that even Stoneman, who keeps a black mistress, recoils when he courts his daughter. Naturally that establishes a Snidley Whiplash scenario, with a bound-and-gagged Elsie awaiting rescue from a lascivious Negro. She fares better than Margaret Cameron (Miriam Cooper), who leaps from a cliff at the mere approach of a black soldier.
It's tempting to dismiss Nation as the product of its time. Yet even in 1915, it inspired NAACP protests and film-length rebuttals, triggered race riots and spurred the Ku Klux Klan's rebirth. It legitimized the Lost Cause narrative, which seeped into popular culture through less inflammatory works like Gone With the Wind. If we view Margaret Cameron's fate as absurd, how many Westerns, colonial adventures and even fantasy films couch similar fears of defilement in more innocuous settings? Nation touches a deeply unsettling vein in American culture that hasn't faded.
Nation builds to a thrilling climax, as Ben Cameron rouses the Ku Klux Klan, saves Elsie and her father, and reunites North and South in glorious, literal matrimony as the Stonemans and Camerons intermarry, with Jesus (!) and the Klan overseeing "fair" elections by intimidating black voters. The scene draws upon historical scenarios like New Orleans' Battle of Liberty Place, where whites disputed the election of a Republican governor and attacked Unionist militia. Thus, it's a masterpiece of filmic technique and a monstrous celebration of hate.
Which describes The Birth of a Nation perfectly. Arguably, no single film was more important to cinema history; yet few films, aside from Jud Suss, espouse such a toxic worldview. It's best-viewed by film students with a strong appreciation for cinematic history, and those with a strong stomach for hate.