The Birth of a Nation pretty much laid the foundations of the major Hollywood studios. The profits it generated for the distributors who then went on to found those studios were the beginning of Hollywood. It is an unspoken item in the history of Hollywood. In many respects The Birth of a Nation is the most important movie in the history of Hollywood. The $2 admission was unheard of at the time of its release.
I bought a copy on Amazon a few years ago . It’s about like a Charley Chaplain movie . The Dictator ...a walky , not a talky .
Look at it this way , if the North had not invaded and destroyed the South , there would have never been any KKK and very likely slavery would have gone away on it’s own . It was on the way out . So-called ‘reconstruction’ , the desecration , domination and sublimation of the entire population of the South caused many aberrations that would have never taken place had not the region been ravaged by war . Lincoln’s war . People were pissed , and they got mean in defeat . The Yanks would have been no different if the South had overrun them and treated everyone so disrespectfully .
It was the movie that put “Hollywood” on the map, and made movie going a creditable entertainment.