While Robert Johnson is right in general about the movies, I think he is wrong about _Birth of a Nation_. Although the film ended up a huge success, when the project was undertaken, almost nobody - aside from Griffith and his immediate circle - thought that such an expensive, long, and costly film would make any money. It was made not so much out of commercial motives as out of Griffith's deep belief 1) in the possibilities for motion picture art [a quite noble belief, IMHO] and 2) in Thomas Dixon's racist view of the history of the South, the Civil War and Reconstruction [a dangerous belief which, with the release of _Birth of a Nation_ helped restart the KKK]. -- Ben Alpers Princeton University