Making headlines from the day it opened in 1915, "The Birth of a Nation" became the most successful silent film ever made, grossing over $10 million in its first run. Director D.W. Griffith's audacious and bravura achievement turned a lurid, negrophobic play called "The Clansman" into a three-hour epic that traces the Civil War, the assassination of Lincoln and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan through the lives of two families. Denounced even at the time for its racism, the film's sweep and scope set a standard for film spectacle and absorbing historical melodrama, and it remains America's most controversial cinematic landmark.
