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The Birth of a Nation
This colossal, majestic Civil War epic from pioneer director DW Griffith is one of the most successful films of all time, though it was released long before proper cinema book-keeping. In terms of film history, the film was ground-breaking: a long and epic narrative telling a complex tale interweaving two families' fortunes, with dramatic reconstructions of key events including the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, not to mention accurate (and costly) re-creations of Civil War battlefields. But — and it's a very big "but" — the source material (by southerner Thomas Dixon Jr) is fervently and distressingly racist, and Griffith remains true to his source. It's hard to applaud a film where the Ku Klux Klan rides triumphantly to the rescue, and this, alas, undoes all the sterling work put in earlier and the wonderful performances from Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Henry B Walthall and especially Robert Harron. Griffith tried to make amends with Intolerance, but the damage was done.
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