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Overview David Lewelyn Wark Griffith, an American filmmaking pioneer, screenwriter, producer, and director, was born January 22, 1875, near Louisville, Kentucky. Best known for his controversial perceptions of race and class in American society, D. W. Griffith left an indelible mark on the history of cinema. He died July 23, 1948, in Hollywood, California. I.

THE MOVIES FIRST GENIUS II. GRIFFITH AND FILM LANGUAGE 1. The State of the Art 2. Revolutionizing Perception III. INVENTING HOLLYWOOD: BLOCKBUSTERS AND DISASTERS 1. The Birth of a Nation (1915) 2.

A Schism Between Form and Content IV. THE PARADOX OF D. W. GRIFFITH V. A GRIFFITH CHRONOLOGY I. THE MOVIES FIRST GENIUS " The task I am trying to achieve is above all to make you see. " D.

W. Griffith Although his sensibilities were rooted in nineteenth century ideas of honor and family, masculinity and femininity, race and history, D. W. Griffith became a towering influence over the most characteristic art form of the twentieth century, the cinema.

Intensely ambitious and passionately in love with art, Griffith displayed all of the maddening contradictions of a mediums first genius: a ham actor himself, he could move other performers to achieve startling nuances of character; a sentimental hack writer, he drew upon the influence of many disciplines to establish revolutionary methods of storytelling on film; a fiery social critic and champion of justice, he could be brutally insensitive and show great lapses in taste and logic. Even in his own time, Griffith was received as an artist who placed thrilling techniques in the service of unexamined, sometimes reprehensible, ideology. His critical and historical reputation has fluctuated wildly since he first began making short films in 1908, from his own claims to greatness, to the cinema students who mythologized him in the sixties, to the current attempts to denounce him and his achievement. But Griffith, more than any other early filmmaker, had a profound effect on the global movie industry.

His rebellion against established cinematic codes and practices helped pave the way to the film culture that persists some eighty years later. In the words of historian David A. Cook, Griffiths achievement is " unprecedented in the history of Western art, much less Western film. " II. GRIFFITH AND FILM LANGUAGE THE STATE OF THE ART Griffith was a thirty-three year old itinerant actor and sometime playwright / novelist when he directed his first film, The Adventures of Dollie (1908). The grammar of cinema at that time had been dictated by businessmen (among them Thomas Edison) who were purely concerned with managing costs and profits.

Afraid that expanded reputations would lead to a demand for higher salaries, the people who financed films made sure filmmakers received no public acknowledgment of any kind; the studios received sole credit for the products. The average film ran one reel in length (approximately ten to twelve minutes) and limited its perspective to what had been the audiences stationary view of a theater stage, with actors photographed most often in wide head-to-toe shots. All of these rules were based largely on perceptions of what the film audience could understand and / or tolerate. However, Griffith reasoned that if the human mind is capable of drawing many connections during the act of reading a book, then motion pictures could somehow imitate the same imaginative process visually. REVOLUTIONIZING PERCEPTION The film factory that hired Griffith for Dollie, the Biograph Company, was pleased with his work and within a few months he was their sole director. He was soon challenging every convention of his time.

Simply stated, Griffiths movies moved. With the help of veteran Biograph cameraman G. W. " Billy" Bitzer, Griffith began moving the camera closer to his actors and cutting to a variety of angles within a single scene. Even more surprising, he began to edit his films not only to connect scenes chronologically, but to give dramatic rhythm to a piece, cutting to startling close-ups of details that enhanced both the story and the actors characterizations. The Biograph management was intensely resistant to these innovations, but they could not deny the overwhelming increase in their revenue. Audiences loved Griffiths movies, immediately resonating to dramatically new approaches to the presentation of narrative.

One fresh technique led to another, and another, in logical and imaginative sequence. From cutting shot-to-shot within a scene, Griffith leapt to the bold device of parallel editing, structuring films with more than one story line and cutting back and forth as the narrative strands came together in an exciting climax. He also developed a technique called interrupting, perhaps his most radical experiment, because it juxtaposed close-ups of actors with shots of objects and / or people about whom the character was thinking. Film was now imitating the processes of consciousness, not merely imitating the stage. III. INVENTING HOLLYWOOD: BLOCKBUSTERS AND DISASTERS Griffiths explosive creativity could not be contained by the American movie business as it existed.

His toughest battles with Biograph were over movie length, for his stylistic innovations seemed to demand ever greater complexity in the stories he told. In his five years at Biograph (1908 - 1913) he had made more than 450 films, most of them one-reeler's, by organizing overlapping schedules with a rotating company of stock performers. Now he wanted to expand the boundaries of his medium in all directions. He left Biograph, taking most of its important personnel with him, and relocated to southern California. THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915) Always looking for exciting stories suited to his kinetic style, Griffith obtained the rights to The Clansman, a distorted and sexually paranoid novel of the Reconstruction era in the post-Civil War South. As the son of a Confederate veteran raised on tales of abominations against the Aryan race, Griffith thought himself uniquely suited, both temperamentally and intellectually, to film this story.

He was right only on the first count. The Clansman was the most expensive film ever made in America at the time, budgeted at $ 40, 000 (or about four times the cost of the average film). By the time it was finished it had absorbed over $ 100, 000. Griffith expanded the narrative to encompass all of the Civil War, adding the emotional resonance of its brother-against-brother conflict by constructing parallel stories of two families, one from the north, one from the south, whose lives intertwined.

The result after five months of shooting was a culmination of everything Griffith had learned and developed in the film business. Aesthetically, The Clansman was peerless. Vast armies clashed on battlefields stretching for miles into the distance, and great events were humanized by their indelible effect on sympathetic characters. The preview audience in Los Angeles collectively jumped to its feet cheering at the finale, a response that would be repeated all over the country. The film was released a month later with a new title, The Birth of a Nation, and it was an instant smash hit on a scale never before seen, running continuously in some theaters for as long as a year, and reaping profits in excess of ten times its cost.

Nation was the first great box office blockbuster, a galvanizing cinematic experience that literally made fortunes for its investors (many of whom, like Louis B. Mayer, went on to build and dominate Hollywood in the following decades). It was also a shameful scandal, generating a cultural upheaval and underscoring Griffiths profound limitations as a thinking man. A SCHISM BETWEEN FORM AND CONTENT " Griffith struck it right when he adapted (The Clansman) for the film.

He knew the South and he knew just what kind of picture would please all white classes" review of The Birth of a Nation in Variety, March 12, 1915 The Birth of a Nation, in addition to its stirring technique and historical recreations, contained all of the original novels virulent racism, an epic glorification of the Ku Klux Klan. Bulging with cruel distortions and paranoid delusions about the nature of African-Americans and their role in Reconstruction, the film remains a monument to ignorance at the dawn of a new century. Griffith was genuinely shocked and hurt by the outrage of the black community over his epic, little realizing that his own ideologies were learned attitudes, not historical or natural facts. He viewed criticism of Nations content as an infringement on his First Amendment rights, even while his film advocated the violent suppression of rights for an entire ethnic group. He was already at work on another film, The Mother and the Law, when Nation began its thundering conquest of the box office. Chafing at criticism of his masterwork, he expanded the new production into an unprecedented extravaganza, crosscutting between four stories of social injustice over the ages.

He called his opus Intolerance (1916) and its physical production dwarfed any film previously attempted. Intolerance cost twenty times the budget of Birth of a Nation, with Griffith channeling most of his profits from the earlier film into gigantic sets that still numb the imagination. Audiences and critics, however, viewed its restless parallel action as confusing and aimless. Though recent scholarship has vindicated Intolerance as a mature work of art, its box office failure in 1916 haunted Griffith for the rest of his life. Like many a Hollywood filmmaker after him, D. W.

Griffith had fatally confused bigger with better. IV. THE PARADOX OF D. W. GRIFFITH A testament to self-absorbed extravagance and artistry gone awry, the massive Babylonian set from Intolerance loomed empty above the growing town of Hollywood, crumbling for a year before it was finally torn down. In the space of three years, 1914 - 1917, Griffiths grand ambitions for cinema had led him to demonstrate, unwittingly, the untapped potential of a new art form in all its power and excess.

Even so, and despite the financial failure of Intolerance, some of Griffiths finest movies were still to be made. Broken Blossoms (1919), a tragedy of urban life, has long been considered by many historians to be his true masterpiece, a return to the kind of atmospheric drama that shaped his art. Way Down East (1920) may be his most representative success, a wildly melodramatic film that made huge profits with the same kind of feverish cinematic effects that gave Nation such broad appeal. Way Down Easts spectacular last minute rescue still makes audiences gasp with wonder and respect for Griffiths mastery of the moving image.

Yet The Birth of a Nation remains at the center of his life and art, the definitive example of Griffiths paradoxical genius, for he was both a great innovator of the movies narrative vocabulary and, at the same time, an elitist who was serenely unaware of the misconceptions that often undermined his best work. Finally, Griffiths nineteenth century parochialism ended his career in the Hollywood that emerged during the twenties. While the silent cinema rose to artistic heights beyond his wildest dreams, the man himself quickly grew irrelevant to the cynical, post-World War I audience. He made his last film in 1931, though he tried for many years to finance a number of productions. D.

W. Griffith died in 1948, alone and disillusioned. At the end he found himself unable to work in his chosen art form, an art form that, largely through his innovations, shaped the culture and consciousness of the twentieth century. A Griffith Chronology 1875 DWG born January 22, the son of a Confederate veteran. 1895 Begins more than a decade of odd jobs, acting in stock companies under the stage name " Lawrence Griffith" . Writes fiction and plays unsuccessfully. 1907 First known employment in the movies, as a bit player in Biograph's Falsely Accused! . 1908 DWG directs his first film, The Adventures of Dollie, in collaboration with cameraman Billy Bitzer. 1909 - 1913 Develops a number of exciting visual techniques from many sources, most notably the novels of Charles Dickens; makes approximately 450 films of one and two-reel length; gathers a stock company of actors that includes Mary Pickford and Lilian Gish. 1914 Breaks with Biograph; begins work on epic The Clansman, the longest American film of its day. 1915 Release of The Clansman under a new title, The Birth of a Nation, unleashes a storm of both controversy and praise. The film is Hollywood's first " blockbuster, " reaping profits in excess of ten times its cost. 1916 Dwg's most ambitious production is Intolerance, released Sept. 15; public response is cool, DWG loses a fortune. 1919 Forms United Artists Film Corporation with silent film greats Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks; makes the highly regarded Broken Blossoms. 1920 The DWG melodrama Way Down East premieres September 3.

It will become his greatest commercial hit after Nation. 1921 - 1930 The rise of Hollywood as a global cultural force; Dwg's films in this period gradually lose impact for the new audience. 1931 Dwg's last film, The Struggle, is pulled from release after poor audience reception. 1935 Receives honorary Oscar for " lasting contribution" . 1948 DWG dies on July 23 at the Hollywood Knickerbocker hotel. He is 7 Recommended Reading Suggestions from the Author Brown, Karl; Adventures with D. W. Griffith; 2 nd ed. ; New York; Da Capo Press; 1976. Heres a review of Adventures with D. W.

Griffith. Eisenstein, Sergei; " Dickens, Griffith, and the Film Today" ; In Film Theory and Criticism; 4 th ed. ; Edited by Gerald Mast, Marshall Cohen, and Leo Beauty; New York; Oxford University Press; 1992; First published in Jay Lead, Film Form; New York; Harcourt Brace Jovanovic h; 1949. Geduld, Harry M. , ed. ; Focus on D. W. Griffith; Englewood Cliffs, NJ; Prentice-Hall; 1971. Gish, Lillian, with Ann Pinchot; Lillian Gish: The Movies, Mr.

Griffith, and Me; Englewood Cliffs, NJ; Prentice-Hall; 1969. Hart, James, ed. ; The Man Who Invented Hollywood: The Autobiography of D. W. Griffith; Louisville, KY; Touchstone Publishing Company; 197 Recommended Viewing Suggestions from the Author The Musketeers of Pig Alley (191 The Birth of a Nation (191 Intolerance (191 Broken Blossoms (191 Way Down East (192 Authors Note: A great number of Griffiths films survive and are available on video. Beware of truncated prints, however. Many tapes rented and sold in stores are not the complete work Griffith intended.

Leonard Martin Annual Movie & Video Guide publishes an extensive list of specialty mail-order houses for the serious collector. The author recommends Facets Video, 1517 W. Fullerton Ave. , Chicago, IL 60614, ph. 800 - 331 - 619 Related Resource African-American Representation in Television and Film Classic Images Milestones in Cinema: Visual Effects Civil War Further Readings A Short Bibliography of Materials in the UC Berkeley Libraries History, Theory, and Criticism of the Arts A National Endowment for the Humanities listing of productions and distributors of material relevant to film history and theory Overcoming the " Sour Grapes" Version of Southern History The Black Experience in America by Norman Coombs The Silents Majority Classic Film Fan Clu Source Cook, David A. ; " D. W. Griffith and the Consummation of Narrative Form" ; chap. 3 in A History of Narrative Film; first ed. ; New York; W. W.

Norton and Company; 198 Bowser, Eileen; " The Transformation of Cinema 1907 - 1915 " ; History of the American Cinema; Charles Harold, ed. , vol. 2; Berkeley, CA; University of California Press; 199 Lang, Robert, ed. ; The Birth of a Nation: D. W. Griffith, director; Rutgers Films in Print, vol. 21; New Brunswick, NJ; Rutgers University Press; 199 Schick el, Richard; D. W. Griffith: An American Life; New York; Simon and Schuster; 198 Simon, Scott; The Films of D.

W. Griffith; Cambridge; Cambridge University Press; 1993.


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