The Birth of a Nation

Today's movie is the infamous Birth of A Nation, directed in 1915 by D.W. Griffith. This is, as it is for all people-who-write-about-movies, a really hard movie to write about. Ebert mentions in his essay that he didn't pick this movie for the first book because he was avoiding it. Look at the art for this move. Can you tell why?
The film is legendary for not only it's contribution to cinema, but for it's abhorrent racism. It's a difficult line that many film historians and fans walk. Do you laud the racist film for how great it is technically? Or do you condemn the entire thing for it's misguided plot? I think most people tend to fall somewhere in the middle - before they write about how many new and interesting things it did, they attack the plot. For me, I feel similar. I have a hard time stomaching the racism, but I do understand how huge on an impact it had on modern film. It is great for it's technical aspects, not at all for it's plot - and I have to sort of take the movie for what it is, however personally uncomfortable I might feel.

Broken Blossoms

D.W. Griffith's 1919 film Broken Blossoms was the first silent movie that I ever saw. I had seen bits and pieces of silent films before, but I never sat down to watch one all the way though. I think I rented it and watched it for a film history class, the first one that I ever took. My boyfriend was over today and he sat down to watch this with me, admitting that he had never seen a whole silent movie before until now.