When David Wark Griffith first applied for film work -- at the Edison Studio in the Bronx -- it was as a scenario writer. A struggling stage actor and playwright, Griffith had penned a screen adaptation of La Tosca in the hopes of supplementing his meager income with occasional film work. The script didn't sell, but director J. Searle Dawley, a contemporary of Edwin S. Porter, hired Griffith as an actor, to play a father who climbs a mountain to rescue an infant from a winged predator in Rescued from an Eagle's Nest (1908).
Realizing that screen acting, not writing, might be the key to his future, Griffith began making the rounds anew, and found a spot at the Biograph Studios on 14th Street in Manhattan. While a working member of the stock company, Griffith was approached with the offer to direct pictures, because one staffer mentioned he, "seems to have a lot of sense and some good ideas." The role of the director was so new and ill-defined that these seemed like qualifications enough for the job.
Initially, Griffith refused the post, worried that he would lose his current acting gig if the directing didn't pan out. Reassured that his old job was secure, Griffith agreed to helm his first picture. The film was 1908's The Adventures of Dollie, about a young girl kidnapped by gypsies and nailed inside a barrel. The barrel tumbles into a stream and is carried toward a waterfall (and certain melodramatic death) until fate intervenes to save her. Once the film was finished, Griffith immediately began to ponder how the craft of cinema could be shaped to maximize dramatic effect. As his wife at the time, actress Linda Arvidson, wrote in her memoir When the Movies Were Young, "the movie business had gotten under his skin. David Griffith had tasted blood -- cinema blood."
The Adventures of Dollie broke the print sales record at Biograph. By this time he was already at work on his sixth picture. The pace of production at Biograph was hectic, to say the least. While at the studio from 1908 to 1913, Griffith directed an astounding 450 films. According to historian Robert Lang, Griffith made films, "at a rate of one twelve-minute and one six-minute subject every week -- during which time he established himself as the American cinema's leading director. He directed all Biograph films from June 1908 until December 1909, and all the important ones during the next four years."
While this rate of production would squeeze most creative minds dry and lead to uninspired hackwork, Griffith treated the studio as an artistic incubator, a never-ending cycle of experimentation in which his directorial style (and the language of cinema itself) was able to evolve and flourish.
Those Awful Hats (1909) seems out of character for Griffith, a bit of slapstick comedy (starring none other than Mack Sennett) that utilized a sophisticated double-exposure to dramatize the extremes to which women's headwear had grown (and the nuisance it posed to moviegoers of 1909). Griffith seemed not very interested in comedy, and to it he seldom returned. If a genre or device interested Griffith, he would revisit it and rework it until he understood how to gain the most dramatic impact from it.
Griffith made the seminal railroad-woman-in-distress melodrama The Lonedale Operator in 1911. He returned to it the following year with The Girl and Her Trust (1912). In this new version, a telegrapher's (Dorothy Bernard) outpost falls under siege by a pair of tramps (Edwin August, Charles Gorman). Biographer Richard Schickel writes, "The little film offers a convenient measure of how much Griffith's technical mastery had grown in just a year's time. For the first time, he used a camera mounted on a car and driven parallel to the train which is pursuing the thieving tramps, who this time have a handcar at their disposal for their attempted escape (and, incidentally, have the heroine on it along with the stolen strong box)." In The Girl and Her Trust and other similar Griffith Biograph films, one finds the template for the race-to-the-rescue scenes of Intolerance (1916).
His Biograph shorts were not mere exercises in style, but attempts to cultivate more complicated themes than romance and rescue.
Griffith's first truly great film was A Corner in Wheat (1909) a remarkably sophisticated drama that hinted at what a force of persuasion the cinema could become. The film offers a critique of stock market profiteers -- not with sermons and wordy intertitles, but through editing. Griffith intercuts between the wealthy profiteers and the victimized farmers in such a way that the viewer a) is not disoriented by the leap through space and time, b) understands the cause-and-effect of greed and poverty, and c) makes a moral judgment about the rich's exploitation of the poor.
The audacious editing (combined with Griffith's progressivist politics) struck a cord with an important wave of filmmakers who would arise in the next decade. "I wish to recall what David Wark Griffith himself represented to us, the young Soviet filmmakers of the twenties," wrote Sergei Eisenstein in 1944, "To say it simply and without equivocation: a revelation."
Griffith's contributions to the art of editing are widely acknowledged, but the sociopolitical content of his short films -- especially those that play out in the tenements of the burgeoning metropolis -- tends to be overlooked.
Scott Simmon observes in his book The Films of D.W. Griffith, "In many ways Griffith is most appealing in his urban dramas. If his popular reputation is as a racist and reactionary, he can also be credited as representative of much of the crusading spirit of pre-World War I America. Only the relatively forgotten status of his urban film makes it surprising to find his Biograph assistant Christy Cabanne recalling Griffith's belief that motion pictures were uniquely suited 'to bring out the truth about unjust social and economic conditions.'"
Being a man who revered tradition, it is no surprise that his urban dramas frequently focused on the family that is imperiled by society's rush to modernity. One of the best examples is For His Son (1912), a perverse little melodrama in which a soft drink manufacturer (Charles Hill Mailes) boosts demand for his product by introducing cocaine into the formula. The wildly popular Dopokoke is a thinly-veiled reference to Coca-Cola (which was once spiked with trace amounts of a coca derivative). The man's son (Charles West) soon develops a dangerous addiction to the drink, forcing the father to recognize the consequences of his irresponsible business practices.
The Sunbeam (1912) is a sentimental drama in which the alienation of life in a boarding house is punctured by a newly-orphaned waif (Ynez Seabury), who breaks down the barriers of propriety, plays matchmaker between a spinster (Claire McDowell) and a bachelor (Dell Henderson), bringing joy to their otherwise impersonal urban existence.
The threat to domestic tranquility posed by urban life is further explored in The Mothering Heart (1913). Lillian Gish plays a pure-hearted wife and mother whose husband (Walter Miller) is distracted by the allure of a dance club and a vampish "Idle Woman" (Viola Barry). One of Griffith's many contributions to screen style was a more subdued performance style free of gesticulation. In one memorable scene, Gish discovers the Idle Woman's white glove in her husband's jacket. "At this moment, Griffith allows Gish to startle us thoroughly by staring directly into the camera (or, it seems from her distant gaze, through and beyond it)...As her eyelids grow heavy, as if in a faint or a rage, she bursts into an unmotivated giggle too brief for hysteria and then slackens the muscles in her face to a sort of grim and passive defeat," Simmon writes, "Gish's direct-to-camera emotional montage goes about as far as possible into the expressive possibilities of the silent closeup."
Griffith's undeniable masterpiece of urban dramas was The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912). "Like a series of Jacob Riis photographs come to life," (Schickel) the film centers around a young woman (Gish) who becomes the object of affection of a devious gangster, the Snapper Kid (Elmer Booth). As Griffith holds the audience's attention with the melodramatic conflict, he works into the margins subtle observations about tenement life, immigrant life, codes of honor, and police corruption. The result is a film that is rich with drama and dense with meaning and shows that, at this point in his career, Griffith was ready to undertake the challenge of feature filmmaking.
Eventually, Griffith's ambitions outgrew Biograph's. The studio was resistant to longer, more expensive films, even though the market appeared to support them. He had convinced Biograph to release some two-reel pictures, but the studio balked at the six-reel length and $36,000 price tag of his 1914 film Judith of Bethulia. When Biograph insisted it be shortened to four reels, Griffith opened himself up to offers from rival companies. He did so by placing an ad in the New York Dramatic Mirror cataloguing his achievements.
He credited himself with "revolutionizing Motion Picture drama and founding the modern technique of the art," and having "introduced" such techniques as the closeup, flashbacks, cross-cutting, the fade-out and "restraint in expression." In the years since Griffith placed this ad (December 31, 1913), historians have debunked some of his lofty claims, as the techniques he mentioned had been used in cinema before he exploited them. However, Griffith's bit of shameless self-promotion should not be allowed to diminish his true achievement. Harry M. Geduld writes in his introduction to his book Focus on D.W. Griffith, "Griffith's major technical 'innovation' was in using the discoveries of others for intelligent dramatic purposes. Thus, while he did not actually 'invent' the closeup, for example, he was the first filmmaker to make use of it as an integral part of narrative or character development. By discovering and showing how and when to use the techniques that others had originated, he enlarged the scope of the medium beyond the wildest dreams of the motion-picture pioneers who preceded him."
After putting himself up for grabs, Griffith was promptly approached by producer Harry Aitken of the Reliance and Majestic Film Companies (whose films were released under the Mutual banner). Aitken allowed Griffith to make films five, six, even seven reels in length.
The sudden burst of creative freedom (and the steadily increasing acclaim that came with it) emboldened Griffith to undertake the unthinkable, a twelve-reel film that would ultimately cost an estimated $500,000: The Birth of a Nation. That film, in spite of the controversy it incited in 1915 (well-justified claims of racism, which continue to swirl about it today), became an American cultural landmark. Birth was the culmination of the themes and techniques that Griffith had cultivated during the years at Biograph (for example, he made no less than ten films with Civil War themes and settings at Biograph, including In the Border States [1910]). If it marked Griffith's greatest success, Birth was also the beginning of Griffith's decline. Having ascended to such a pinnacle of notoriety, artistry, and financial success, there really was nowhere to go but down.
To Griffith's credit, his descent was gradual, and though he never topped the audacious The Birth of a Nation, he made a number of important features in its wake, and continued to expand and elaborate upon the language of cinema.
by Bret Wood
THOSE AWFUL HATS (1909)
Director: D.W. Griffith
Screenplay: D.W. Griffith
Cinematography: G.W. "Billy" Bitzer
Cast: Mack Sennett, Flora Finch, Linda Arvidson, Robert Harron, Florence Lawrence
A CORNER IN WHEAT (1909)
Director: D.W. Griffith
Screenplay: D.W. Griffith and Frank Woods
Based on the story "The Pit" by Frank Norris
Cinematography: G.W. "Billy" Bitzer
Cast: Frank Powell (The Wheat King), James Kirkwood (Farmer), Linda Arvidson (Farmer's Wife), Grace Henderson (Wheat King's Wife), Henry B. Walthall (Wheat King's Assistant)
THE SUNBEAM (1912)
Director: D.W. Griffith
Screenplay: George Hennessy
Cinematography: G.W. "Billy" Bitzer
Cast: Ynez Seabury (Sunbeam), Kate Bruce (Sunbeam's mother), Claire McDowell (Spinster), Dell Henderson (Bachelor), Christy Cabanne, John T. Dillon
IN THE BORDER STATES (1910)
Director: D.W. Griffith
Screenplay: Stanner E.V. Taylor
Cinematography: G.W. "Billy" Bitzer
Cast: Charles West (Young Father), Gladys Egan (Younger Sister), John T. Dillon (Union Soldier), Edward Dillon (Confederate Soldier), Verner Clarges (Union Officer), Henry B. Walthall (Confederate Corporal)
FOR HIS SON (1912)
Director: D.W. Griffith
Screenplay: Emmett C. Hall
Cinematography: G.W. "Billy" Bitzer
Cast: Charles Hill Mailes (The Father), Charles West (The Son), Blanche Sweet (The Son's fiancée)
THE GIRL AND HER TRUST (1912)
Director: D.W. Griffith
Screenplay: George Hennessy
Cinematography: G.W. "Billy" Bitzer Cast: Dorothy Bernard (Grace), Wilfred Lucas (Jack), Edwin August (Tramp), Charles Gorman (Tramp), Christy Cabanne (Baggage Handler), Robert Harron (Station Worker)
THE MOTHERING HEART (1913)
Director: D.W. Griffith
Cinematography: G.W. "Billy" Bitzer
Cast: Lillian Gish (The Young Wife), Walter Miller (The Young Husband), Kate Bruce (The Young Wife's Mother), Viola Barry (The "Idle Woman"), Charles West (The "New Light")
THE MUSKETEERS OF PIG ALLEY (1912)
Director: D.W. Griffith
Screenplay: D.W. Griffith and Anita Loos
Cinematography: G.W. "Billy" Bitzer
Cast: Walter Miller (The Musician), Lillian Gish (The Little Lady), Elmer Booth (The Snapper Kid), John T. Dillon (Policeman), Harry Carey (Snapper's Sidekick), Robert Harron (Gang Member), Clara T. Bracy (The Little Lady's Mother)
