America

D.W. Griffith's Revolutionary War epic, made for the 150th anniversary that had not quite arrived, with a colonial family split between patriot and Tory and a romance that has to survive Lexington, Valley Forge, and Benedict Arnold. Released 1924, after America had already begun to sour on Griffith's history lessons. Neil Hamilton and Carol Dempster are the lovers; the battle scenes still have his gift for moving bodies through landscape. It is not The Birth of a Nation and it is not Orphans of the Storm. It is Griffith trying to make a founding-myth picture after the industry had moved on, and the strain shows, which is part of what makes it worth watching.