I Googled it for some details and this page came up first: http://www.filmsite.org/birt.html
A controversial, explicitly racist, but landmark American film masterpiece - these all describe ground-breaking producer/director D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915). The domestic melodrama/epic originally premiered with the title The Clansman in January, 1915 in California, but three months later was retitled with the present title at its world premiere in New York, to emphasize the birthing process of the US. The film was based on former North Carolina Baptist minister Rev. Thomas Dixon Jr.'s anti-black, 1905 bigoted play, The Clansman...
Its release set up a major censorship battle over its vicious, extremist depiction of African Americans, although Griffith naively claimed that he wasn't racist at the time. Unbelievably, the film is still used today as a recruitment piece for Klan membership - and in fact, the organization experienced a revival and membership peak in the decade immediately following its initial release. And the film stirred new controversy when it was voted into the National Film Registry in 1993, and when it was voted one of the "Top 100 American Films" (at # 44) by the American Film Institute in 1998.
Film scholars agree, however, that it is the single most important and key film of all time in American movie history
They just ain't making'em like this no more.
"Birth of a Nation" is not listed because the article is about comedies. Although parts of "BoaN" appear hilarious now, it was supposed to be a serious drama.
*sigh* Did ANYONE read comment #1?
Didn't see your post prior to mine above
We tend to judge all things by our own, developed morals. Griffith was entirely a Southern boy and a product of the Civil War Era...points of view change perspectives.
My parents felt badly toward the Germans and the Japanese during WWII.