David Lewelyn Wark Griffith

“The single most important figure in the history of American film and one of the most influential in the development of world cinema as an art” - Ephraim Katz

“He was the teacher of us all” - Charles Chaplin

22 January 1875 - La Grange Kentucky

Colonel “Roaring Jake” Jacob Wark Griffith
Francis Oglesby - cousin
Mary Oglesby

1889 Family moves to Louisville
    “Lawrence” find the Theatre

1889 Leaves home to find his fortune

1906 Marries Linda Arvidson and moves to New York
    Tries to sell Porter La Tosca
        1907 Rescued from an Eagles Nest
        1908 A Calamitous Elopement
        1908 At the French Ball

Biograph
    The Adventures of Dollie - Stars Arvidson
    Meets Billy Bitzer
    1910 Starts to Winter in California and starts to use his real name
    1913 Leaves Biograph after cranking out 450 “sausages”

Credited with establishing the basic language of film
    Grammar
    Syntax
    Metaphorical Editing
    Allegory

    Cross/Parallel Cutting

    Camera and actor must work together

    Rehearsals

    Stock Company
        Mary Pickford - Lillian & Dorothy Gish - Blanche Sweet - Mable Normand - Mae Marsh - Henry B. Walthall - Robert (Bobby) Harron - Harry Carey - Lionel Barrymore

    Liberates cinema from theatre

Wanted to direct longer films
    Thomas Ince
    Enrico Guazzoni            
	
    1911 Two Reeler Enoch Arden
    1913 Four Reeler Judith of Bethulia

1914 Leaves Biograph for Mutual/Reliance-Majestic
    Takes most of his crew

1915 Biograph folds

Makes deal with Harry & Roy Aitken that allows him to make one picture of his own a year

1914 Birth of a Nation
    Thomas Dixon
        Clansman
        The Leopard’s Spots
         Lawyer - state legislator - novelist - playwright - actor - lecturer - real estate speculator - preacher
        Three main themes
            Racial Purity
            Family centered on traditional wife and family
            Evils of socialism
        Condemned slavery and the Klan after reconstruction
        Fought political equality for African Americans because he feared it would lead to miscegenation

    Shot in seven weeks after six weeks of rehearsal
        About twelve weeks longer than the norm
    Cost $125,000 (new record)
    Admission $2
    Opens as the Clansman - Clune’s Auditorium 8 February 1915
    Dixon suggests The Birth of a Nation

    President Wilson
        “Like history written with lightning”

    The story of two families - Camerons & Stonemans

        Insert
        Insert Revisited
        Piedmont Street
        Chums
        Tinting
        Iris Shot
        Battle Scenes

The Birth of a Nation

    Acting
    The Great Heart
    Assassination
    Going to the Dogs
    To the Rescue
    The More Things Change . . . 
    The End

It’s not over yet . . . 

Reaction
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    Sheets
    Walter Long