The Birth of A Nation
Release date 3rd March 1915
Country : USA
Running time : 185 mins
Genre : War
Starring Lillian Gish, Robert Harron, Henry B Walthall, Mae Marsh
Screenplay by D.W.Griffith based on the play The Clansman by Thomas Dixon
Directed by D.W.Griffith



  The experiences of two families during the American Civil War and the Reconstruction.

The cinema's first great epic which established the movies as a mass entertainment that could attract all classes in society.Prior to this film the upper classes looked down on films and film-makers.

It still stands up brilliantly well with its forceful narrative and impressive battle scenes. At the time President Wilson said it was like seeing history written in lightning. Even Griffith himself was surprised by the extraordinary power of his film. Today's audiences have no doubts that it is totally racist with the Klu Klux Klan riding to the rescue and white actors in blackface but few films can illicit such responses 90 years after they were made.  

 

Griffith had broke new ground since 1908 when he directed his first film for the American Biograph company.

Lillian Gish was right when she described him as "the Father of Film". Griffith was determined to rival the Italians who were producing elaborate feature films such as Quo Vadis ? (1913) and Cabiria (1914) while the Americans were still stuck in the two or three reeler rut. Biograph didn't want to finance longer films because they didn't believe people would sit through them.

In 1914 Griffith left the company and they never amounted to anything again.