Amazon.com: Birth of a Nation (Silent): Spottiswoode Aitken, Mary Alden, George Beranger, Elmer Clifton, Miriam Cooper, Donald Crisp, Josephine Crowell, Howard Gaye, Lillian Gish, Robert Harron, Joseph Henabery, Jennie Lee, Ralph Lewis, Walter Long, Mae Marsh, Wallace Reid, George Siegmann, Maxfield Stanley, Henry B. Walthall: Video

Birth of a Nation (Silent) (1915)

Starring: Spottiswoode Aitken, Mary Alden Rating

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Actors: Spottiswoode Aitken, Mary Alden, George Beranger, Elmer Clifton, Miriam Cooper
Format: Black & White, EP, Silent, NTSC
Language: English
Rating:
Number of tapes: 1
Studio: Madacy Records
VHS Release Date: September 25, 1997
Run Time: 125 minutes

Average Customer Review:

(148 customer reviews)

ASIN: 6304819609
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #15,206 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)
Popular in these categories: (What's this?)
#11 in Video > Classics > Silent Films > Drama
#12 in Video > Mystery & Suspense > Blackmail, Murder & Mayhem > Assassination
#45 in Video > Military & War > Civil War

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Amazon.com essential video
A pivotal moment in film history. After The Birth of a Nation, nothing was the same: not the way audiences watched movies, not the way filmmakers created them. D.W. Griffith's jumbo-size saga of the Civil War expanded the boundaries of storytelling on the screen, conveying a richer, more complicated (and certainly longer) tale than anyone had seen in a movie before. The delicate relationships, the sad passage of time, the spectacular battle scenes all look as fresh and innovative today as they did in 1915. So do Griffith's brilliant actors, most of them--including favorite leading lady Lillian Gish--drawn from his regular stock company. What has become increasingly problematic about The Birth of a Nation is Griffith's condescending attitude toward black slaves, and the ringing excitement surrounding the founding of the Ku Klux Klan. Griffith, whose political ideas were naive at best, seemed genuinely surprised by the criticism of his masterwork, and for his next project he turned to the humanist preaching of the massive Intolerance. Despite protests, Birth sold more tickets than any other movie, a record that stood for decades, and President Woodrow Wilson famously compared it to "history written in lightning." That judgment has lasted. --Robert Horton