Integrative Arts 10
Illusionism and D.W. Griffith
The Birth of a Nation... might be said to have caused the shotgun wedding of the stage and the movies.
- D.W. Griffith
David Wark Griffith
Born 23 January 1875, La Grange, Kentucky Died 23 July 1948, Los Angeles, California.
A touring actor with a variety of regional stock companies and a
journalistwith the Louisville Courier (1897-99), Griffith later
appeared in vaudeville and on the legitimate New York stage
before being hired to write motion picture scenarios for the
Edison Company and starring in the film Rescued from the
Eagle’s Nest (1907). Hired by the Biograph Studio in
1908 as a scriptwriter and director, he made around five hundred
one and two reel films over the next five years, a collection of
westerns, romances and adventure yarns ranging from The
Adventures of Dolly (1908) to the early work of Mary Pickford
in The Violin Maker of Cremora, (1909), A Romance of
the Western Hills (1910) and many others, and the Unseen
Enemy (1912), a thriller that introduced Dorothy (1898–1968)
and Lillian Gish to the screen. An innovator in the use of
film technique, he is generally regarded as the first American
film artist to make expressive use of dramatic devices like close-up
flashbacks and cross-cutting that were to
become standard elements in narrative construction. Influenced by
the lavish scale and ornateness of the Italian epic production
then being seen in America, he made the longer form Judith of
Bethulia (1914) and then the revolutionary three-hour The
Birth of a Nation (1915). A story of North and South during
the Civil war that impressed with the panoramic sweep of its
storytelling, tumultuous battle scenes and flowing narrative
pace, it was marred by a racist perspective that rendered the Ku
Klux Klan in a heroic light. He followed this with Intolerance
(1916), another major advance in the art of American filmmaking
that intercuts four stories from different historical periods to
build a catalogue of injustice and iniquity through the ages. He
subsequently worked with cinematographer Billy Bitzer
(1874-1944) and actress Lillian Gish on simple, tenderly
sentimental and luminously beautiful romantic stories of
hardship, tragedy and self-Sacrifice like Hearts of the World
(1918), Broken Blossoms (1919) and Way Down East (1920).
In 1919, together with Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and
Mary Pickford, he formed United Artists, but his Victorian
sensibility and tendency to preach sound moral attitudes were
already becoming outmoded as audiences embraced the jazz age and
the work of Cecil B. De Mille and Erich Von Stroheim.
Such films as the epic America (1924) and Drums of Love
(1928) were not successful and he made only two sound films Abraham
Lincoln (1930) and his last, The Struggle (1931).He
received a special Oscar in 1936 for his ‘lasting
contribution to the progress of the motion picture arts’
but he was unable to secure backing for any projects during the
last fifteen years of his life and his final involvement with the
medium he had helped to maturity was as a consultant on One
Million Years BC in 1939.
Griffith, D(avid) W(ark) (1875-1948), pioneering American
motion-picture director, who established a new standard for
motion-picture production. He is often called The Father of the
Motion Picture.
Griffith was born in La Grange, Kentucky, and was educated in
local schools. After working as an actor in stock and road
theater companies, he became a motion-picture actor for the
Biograph Film Company in 1908, later serving as a director for
the studio in New York City and in California. For Biograph alone
he made more than 450 short films. There, too, he assembled his
own stock company of film professionals, including many of the
era's most notable actors (such as Mary Pickford, the Gish
sisters, Mabel Normand, Mae Marsh, and Wallace Reid) and
directors (such as Mack Sennett and Erich von Stroheim). He also
collaborated extensively with the legendary cameraman Billy
Bitzer.
In 1913 Griffith left Biograph for Reliance-Majestic studios and
later became an independent producer. His pictures Judith of
Bethulia (1914), Birth of a Nation (1915), and Intolerance (1916)
established him as the leading motion-picture producer of the
time. Birth of a Nation is considered among the most important
films ever made, for its success established not only the
feature-length film but also the Hollywood star system. The
motion picture demonstrates the disturbing power of film
propaganda: Its racist elements provoked protests, riots, and
other violence, and eventually a move toward film censorship
laws. Intolerance, a grand-scaled film pursuing four story lines
simultaneously, was not successful at the box office but has had
a significant influence on the subsequent development of film
art.
Until Griffith's time, motion pictures had been short, rarely
exceeding one reel; episodic rather than dramatic; and poorly
produced, acted, and edited. Griffith's films were frequently
several hours in length, contained powerful dramatic situations
and vivid characters, and were produced with technical
virtuosity. He perfected some of the best-known devices in
motion-picture production, such as the close-up, a close view of
a character's face or figure or of an object, shown for dramatic
emphasis; the fade-out, a transition from one scene to another by
the gradual disappearance of the first scene from the screen; the
cutback, or flashback, which for purposes of clarification of
plot or characterization, introduces scenes antedating those
already shown; and, most importantly, the use of parallel
editing, the cross-cutting of footage of simultaneous action to
achieve suspense.
In 1920, with film actors Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and
Charlie Chaplin, Griffith formed the United Artists Corporation
for the production of feature pictures. Among the motion pictures
he directed for that company were Broken Blossoms (1919), Way
Down East (1920), The Orphans of the Storm (1922), America
(1924), Battle of the Sexes (1928), and Lady of the Pavements
(1929), all of them silent films except for Lady, which included
some singing. Griffith made two talking pictures—Abraham
Lincoln (1930) and The Struggle (1931)—but they were not as
successful as his silent films.
Internet Movie Database on Griffith
Outline of a Book on "Intolerance"
Some Points to Ponder While Watching "Birth of a Nation"
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