Aside from being offensive it’s just boring. For the most part I think the film is primarily of interest to movie buffs and to historians. It’s interesting to film buffs because BoaN was so innovative and you can see film techniques that continue to be used today. For historians, it’s a great example of race relations in the early 20th century and it fits well with the historiography of the Reconstruction era South. But for normal people the pace is too slow and the movie is just dull.
That’s what I remember about it. I honestly don’t remember the offensive part (I saw it probably 15 years ago), I just remember being bored out of my skull. So, no, I probably wouldn’t watch it again, but not because I’m worried about being offended, just because I don’t remember liking the movie.
I’m impressed! I’ve actually been to parts of Georgia where Sherman rolled through (Macon, in particular), and mentioned I’d had an ancestor who fought for the North in the Civil War when they asked if I was “a good boy or a Yankee”, but no one ever recognized the name. Although they were still full of stories about how terrible Sherman’s was.
Yes.
Someone probably saw it at the wrong speed. If you see it at sound speed, the acting looks overwrought and horrible, but it does run only about 2 hours. It’s much better if you see it at the correct speed, which I’m assuming it will be at this festival. Also, if you get the most complete print possible, it will be over four hours.
If you are really lucky, you will get to see it with the original score written for the movie, that does not have the KKK riding off to the “Ride of the Valkyries.”
Just a data point: the KKK was essentially dead when the film came out, and Griffith had no idea that the film would cause a resurgence in interest-- it was the first time a film ever spurred a social movement. He was stunned, and a little helpless in the face of this. So yes, we have the film to thank for the modern KKK, but Griffith did not set out to do that. No one had any idea that film had that kind of power back in 1914.
Griffith tried to make a “brotherhood of man” movie next, called Intolerance, thinking that if a movie could divide people, another one could unite them, but it didn’t work out so well. Intolerance (in some places, a much better movie) was a flop, and in the middle of WWI, nobody bought its message.
I’m a huge fan of both Lillian Gish and Mae Marsh. Take that for what you will.
I know I’ve seen significant parts of it, but I honestly can’t recall if I’ve seen the whole thing. If it were playing on a big screen near me, I would go watch it. I’d have an easier time making it all the way through it that way than if I tried to watch it on TV by myself. Would be interesting from both American history and cinematic history perspectives.
Saw it in undergraduate History and Film class, wrote mediocre paper comparing it to Triumph of Will, and would watch it again (because its been so long since I have actually seen it) only if offered money (cash upfront) to write an article or give a presentation on the subject. .
It’s a great film by the greatest of early directors. I’ve watched it 3 or 4 times and coincidentally I recently watched Griffith’s final movie, The Struggle, 1931, a sound movie about one man’s lifelong battle against alcoholism. It’s certainly not on the same level as Birth of a Nation but it’s an interesting film with sparks of the Griffith touch throughout.
People who object to the showing of Birth of a Nation need to concentrate on present-day racism. I hate to be the one to tell them but past events and attitudes cannot be changed no matter how loudly you inveigh against them.
Seen it, own it, would watch it again, and find the idea that one should only watch films (or any other art) that has the right message to be fucking disgusting, and basically fascist…
But could it be successfully Rifftracked?
Okay, I’ll chalk that one up to fading memory :). This would have been around 1986 or '87 - could be ( probably was ) the case we saw it over a couple of days. Shows how much I remember about it.
The version I linked to has a run time of 193 minutes. There are other versions which have run times of 180 minutes and 186 minutes.
I checked IMDB and Wikipedia and they list run times of 125 minutes, 133 minutes, 187 minutes, 190 minutes, and 193 minutes.
From what I can tell, the movie was filmed at sixteen frames a second and if you play if back at that speed, you get a run time of a little over three hours. I’ve watched it played at that speed and the movement seems a little languid but natural.
I know that a lot of silent movies were played at higher speeds than they were recorded at but my understanding was this was often done for comedic effect (like the Keystone cops) or to squeeze more showings into a day. I have to feel that if you filmed a movie at sixteen frames a second and played it at twenty four frames a second, the movement would seem unnatural.
This movie is old enough, that it was probably filmed with hand-cranked cameras. Honestly, I’m not sure, but probably a lot of theaters that played it used hand-cranked projectors. 16fps is the usual playback for hand-cranked films, but the assumption back then was that the projectionist watched the film and adjusted.
One of the things done when silents are remastered digitally is to even them out so they can be played at a constant speed without speeding up and slowing down, which was a problem up through the mid-1990s.
Now, later silents were filmed with motorized cameras, and a steady speed. That’s why films like Metropolis look so different from films like The Great Train Robbery.
Silent films were still slower than sound-on-film prints, because sound on film required faster playback to sound right.
I saw it in high school. (it wasn’t such an old film then). I wouldn’t watch it again, not for any ideological reasons, but just because I’ve seen in once and doubt very much it would interest me again, despite my interest in history. There are very few movies I watch more than once. (I never bought a DVD to “own” a copy of any movie, for example).
Saw it. At first I hated the thing. Slowly I came around to seeing that film as a window on a time not that long ago. A time that a lot of people would rather sweep under the rug.
The newly formed NAACP warned that the film could cause a reformation of the defunct Ku Klux Klan…and that indeed is what happened.
I’ve seen it, but probably wouldn’t watch it again. I like silent movies, but this one is just too long.
I would see it again, with a clinical eye.
To dissect it, as to how it was made.
I’d watch it again only to annoy folks at the SDMB. It’s rather boring. 
I’ve learned from this thread that the use of moving cameras was an innovation, but what else makes it an important film in the history of cinematography?
Saw it, not going to seek it out to see it again. Not that I’m offended by it, but I’m just not a cinephile.
Life is too short to see boring movies twice.
I saw it 25 years ago in a history class, and I don’t remember it being boring. I’d watch it again to refresh my memory, but I don’t plan to go out of my way to seek it out.