Ruth Leon recommends… D.W. Griffith – Film Director

​D.W. Griffith – Film Director

David Wark Griffith was born on January 22nd, 1875, in Crestwood, Kentucky, so this is his 150th birthday. This American film director, producer and screenwriter, best known for Birth of a Nation and Intolerance, was, in a real sense, the founder of the movie industry and certainly one of the most influential figures in the history of film.
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In 1915 he directed The Birth of a Nation, one of the most financially successful films of all time but, with its degrading portrayals of African Americans, its glorification of the Ku Klux Klan, and support for the Confederacy, it led to riots in several major cities and there were attempts to have it banned. Griffith insisted that his critics had unfairly maligned his work and made his next film, the equally significant Intolerance (1916) in response.

In Intolerance, Griffith compares, through parallel editing, four different stories distant in time and space: The Fall of Babylon, The Passion of Christ, The Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and a modern story set in an American city. To go from one story to another, Griffith interposes the allegorical image of a woman, Lillian Gish, swinging a cradle. But in the final sequences, arguably the best part of the film, Griffith abandons this conceit to go directly from one episode to another in a growing climax of suspense and tension. The film was a disaster at its first showing so Griffith, who had a point to make, took it back and re-edited it.

In 1919, angry that the major studios had too much creative power over those who actually made the films, Griffith joined with Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, the biggest stars of the day, to form their own studio, United Artists. This led to the production of many popular and successful films.

By 1931, when he made his final feature, The Struggle, D.W. Griffith had made about 500 films. All but three were silent.

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