AMUSEMENTS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLVI, Issue 13040, 30 December 1916, Page 3

AMUSEMENTS.

"THE BIRTH OF A NATION/' At the Opera House to-night this mighty achievement will bo presented in conjunction with J. C. Williamson. jVithotit a dissenting voice this picture Zfc proclaimed by all to be the .sensation m( tin- season. We quote the following sly the Rev. Thomas B. Gregory in the •??>ew York American':—"ln the gYpat photo, spectacle, ' The Birth of a Nation,* which had its initial presentation at the Liberty Theatre, Mr I). W. Griffith comes pretty near working a miracle. And yet this is just what Mr Griffith has done, and done with a completeness and perfection that is astounding. As a picture-play, ' The Birth of a Nation ' is, by all odds, the greatest thing that has ever come to New York, and in this masterpiece of motion-picture production we may see something of the possibilities of the art as an educator to the human race, through the most royal of the senses, the eye. Mr Griffith and his forces were eight months making the picture. They travelled over the sections in which the story is located, and reproduced the scenes with rigid fidelity. I am prepared to say that not one of the mora than five thousand pictures that go to make up the drama is in any essential wav an exaggeration. They nre one and all faithtful to historicfact, so that looking upon them, you may feel that you are beholding that •which actually happened. Regarding the educational vaiuo of the great photo play no one ivho bcch it can be ihc least "bit sceptical."