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Ian welcomes back National Review film critic Armond White for a look at two movies whose influence on the art form is as undeniable as it is controversial.

D.W. Griffith's 1915 silent epic The Birth of a Nation is a Klan origin fable bursting with racism and historical inaccuracies--but it's also a gripping human drama that boasts ahead-of-its-time storytelling techniques. Griffith followed this up the next year with Intolerance, an even grander project that interweaves four centuries-spanning morality tales, all connected by a theme that essentially undermines The Birth of a Nation's...intolerance.

In this wide-ranging (and by no means definitive) conversation, Ian and Armond talk about the balance between appreciating art and endorsing it; Griffith's puzzlingly inconsistent use of blackface; and what makes Intolerance, in Mr. White's opinion, the "greatest movie ever made."

Show Links:

• Watch the Birth of a Nation (1915) trailer.

• Watch the Intolerance (1916) trailer.

• Read Armond's The Birth of a Nation (1915) review.

• Read Armond's Intolerance (1916) review.

• Order the book that inspired this conversation, Armond White's Make Spielberg Great Again.

• Subscribe to, like, and comment on the Kicking the Seat YouTube channel!