D. W. Griffith (& Lilian Gish)

Please watch these clips and take notes in your journal/notebook to answer: Who is D.W. Griffith and why is he important to film history?

D.W. Griffith - The Great Director
The Great Director - Part 2 (clips from Birth of a Nation - please watch)
The Great Director - Part 3 (clips from Intolerance - please watch)
The Great Director - Part 4

D.W. Griffith was called the "Father of film technique" & "the man who invented Hollywood"

With cinematographer G.W. Bitzer, he created and perfected the film devices:
the iris shot
the flashback
crosscutting

He directed the very controversial The Birth of a Nation (1915) Based on Thomas Dixon's stage play "The Clansman" Over 3 hours long, the racist epic included a cast of hundreds. The film contained many new film innovations:
Special use of subtitles
Its own musical score with orchestra
Introduction of night photography
Used a "still shot"
Used an "Iris shot"
Used parallel action
Used panning and tracking shots
Used close-ups to reveal intimate expressions of actors
Used fade outs and cameo-profiles
Used high-angles and panoramic (extreme) long shots
Used cross cutting between two scenes to create excitement and suspense

A year later his masterpiece Intolerance (1916) was made as a reaction to the censorship of Birth of a Nation

In 1919 he established the film company United Artists with Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and William S. Hart

Overall, Griffith directed over 500 films. He retired in 1931 and died in Los Angeles in 1948. In 1975 his picture was on a post stamp. But by 1999, The Director's Guild of America's National Board renamed the prestigious D.W. Griffith Award (first given in 1953 to such directors as Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick, John Huston, Alfred Hitchcock, Ingmar Bergman, John Ford, Akira Kurosawa, and Cecil B. DeMille) because of Griffith's racism.

"We do not fear censorship, for we have no wish to offend with improprieties or obscenities, but we do demand, as a right, the liberty to show the dark side of wrong, that we may illuminate the bright side of virtue - the same liberty that is conceded to the art of the written word - that art to which we owe the Bible and the works of Shakespeare."
D.W. Griffith (1915)

"If in this work we have conveyed to the mind the ravages of war to the end that war may be held in abhorrence, this effort will not have been in vain." - D. W. Griffith (1915)

You are welcome to watch the rest of the film (parts 5 & 6) if you wish. Otherwise, please take a look at these clips and films starring Lilian Gish.

Way Down East (1920) Probably the most amazing stunt ever pulled in cinema history. Please realize that these actors really were doing their own stunts. That water is cold and yes, those are ice floes.

Orphans of the Storm (1921) (with sister Dorothy Gish)
Judith of Bethulia (1913) (entire film)