David W Griffith

David Llewelyn Wark Griffith was born on January 22, 1875 in LaGrange (Kentucky) into a Methodist family. Her father, a farmer who became a colonel during the Civil War (from the Southern side), died when the future filmmaker was only 10 years old, so the mother decided to take her children to Louisville, where she opened a house of guests. Since childhood, Griffith was a great reader who devoured books, especially Charles Dickens , his great favorite.

His family had been left in such a delicate situation that he dropped out of high school to work as a clerk in various stores. He managed to find time to write stories, since his goal was to become a playwright. However, his works were not widely accepted. He only managed to get a company to agree to perform a single performance of one of his works.

With the invention of the cinematograph, Griffith concludes that he can devote himself to writing films. In 1907 he moved to New York and went to the office of the producer and director Edwin S. Porter , inventor of the western, at the Edison studios, to bring him a script. Porter did not like the writing at all, but he is moved by Griffith’s delicate financial situation, at the same time that he sees him with a good presence, so he decides to sign him up as an actor, for the company’s film Rescued from an Eagle’s Nest , directed by J Searle Dawley. The plot was very simple, because Griffith played a father who has to free his son, kidnapped by a gigantic eagle.

After a few more roles, Griffith accepts a contract as a director with Biograph, one of the first American production companies, to replace another professional who had fallen ill, since at that time, the companies had a fixed number of technicians on their payroll. and actors. His first film as a director was The Adventures of Dollie , another story of a kidnapped girl, this time by a gypsy.

Between 1908 and 1913, the filmmaker developed an intense activity at the rate of one or two films per week, always on one roll, which is about 15 minutes long. It addresses all kinds of genres (drama, comedy, western), except the fantastic theme. According to historians, one of these works, In Old California , was the first film to be shot in Hollywood, where the main production companies would later come together.

The custom of the time consisted of telling everything through general shots that imitated the sensation of seeing a theatrical stage, as can be seen, for example, in the films of George Méliès. As a general rule, the plane only changed when the action happened to take place in another place. In isolation, some pioneers like Porter had risked going off the rails. But Griffith would completely renew the cinema by developing the cinematographic language that is basically still used today. For example, he used the close-up, which until then was thought to terrify viewers, but also the long shot, which was not used because it was believed that the characters would not be distinguished. The most innovative thing was the constant alternation of shots in the same scene,

Sometimes he had the need to translate the literary language of nineteenth-century authors like his beloved Dickens to the screen. For example, he tried to translate common expressions from the novels like “many years before” on the screen, which inspired him to invent the flashback, at a time when professionals thought that altering the chronological order would baffle the respectable. He also introduced dramatic and contrasting lighting, drawing inspiration from the different effects achieved with it in photography and painting. Among other findings, the black fade and the caches stand out (those edges of the screen in black, in disuse except in films like The Artist). The parallel montage (cross-cut) takes the cake, interspersing actions that take place in different places or times. In The Telephone (The Lonely Villa) , from 1909, he invents what is known as ‘Griffith’s last-minute rescue’, which consists of using this parallel montage to create suspense. Thus, a mother and her daughters harassed by thieves manage to call her father, who comes running to the rescue. His journey is intertwined with what is happening to his family, creating the feeling that he has a very difficult time getting there on time.

During this time, Griffith, remembered as a great talent discoverer, consecrated great silent film stars such as Mary Pickford , Blanche Sweet , Mae Marsh , Mabel Normand, and above all Lillian Gish , his great muse. He married one of her usual actresses, Linda Arvidson, but very soon, in 1912, he separated from her. He would not ask for a divorce until 1936, when Griffith was married to Evelyn Baldwin, another actress he had met at a benefit.

Soon, the filmmaker’s short films fell short, as he missed telling more complex stories. The massacre , a western about a massacre in an Indian village, already had two rolls, while the biblical Judith de Betulia lasts 61 minutes, which is why it is considered his first feature film.

Over time, Biograph got tired of so much innovation that they rarely understood. In addition, they thought that the long ones would tire the public. The filmmaker ended up leaving home, and after a brief stint at the competition, Mutual, where he filmed Battle of the Sexes and Home Sweet Home , he decides to establish himself as an independent producer.

After taking this step, he achieved money for his mega -project The Birth of a Nation , without a doubt his most famous work. It cost $110,000, which in 1914 was unprecedented. It adapts the novel “The Clansman” by Thomas Dixon, another son of a Confederate colonel. Basically, it follows in the footsteps of two families, the Camerons and the Stonemans, through the years of the Civil War.

On a technical level it was a real revolution in cinema. There were no longer isolated groundbreaking finds, but fluently alternated wide shots with close-ups. It included montages of three parallel actions, in some battle, and moments that made history, such as when a panoramic view shows the pain of a frightened mother with a baby in her arms, houses on fire and the advance of military troops.

It caused enormous controversy, since the plot justifies the creation of the Ku Klux Klan due to the alleged outrages of the black population. Before the premiere, it was expected that it would be scandalous, and even the President of the United States, Wilson, had it screened at the White House, to decide whether to allow its broadcast. He chose to give it the green light, since the elections were approaching and he thought that prohibiting it would take away votes in the south.

It can be said that he inaugurated the fixed sections of cinema in the American newspapers, since numerous articles appeared, for and against. There were also riots in the streets. For his part, Griffith himself did not consider himself a racist, although it was clear that his upbringing in the old South had conditioned him to accept the book he was going to bring to the screen. All the commotion favored the collection, since you had to go see it to be able to give your opinion and there were even many repeat viewers, despite its 190-minute duration. In this way, Wall Street investors became aware for the first time of the possibilities of the cinema to obtain profitability.

After forming Triangle Pictures with two other great filmmakers, Thomas H. Ince and Mack Sennett , Griffith began the launch of another of his great blockbusters, which is called Intolerance , since it was basically going to be a compilation of stories that showed that fanaticism causes great disasters, in different historical periods. Possibly, the choice of subject is due to his guilt complex for what happened with his previous work.

Intertwine the four stories with images of a woman rocking a cradle. It is about the massacre of the Huguenots during the night of Saint Bartholomew in the 16th century, a workers’ strike, the fall of Babylon before the Persian attack and the passion and death of Jesus Christ. Extremely spectacular, especially the Babylonian segment, it included monumental decorations visited by large masses. 16,000 extras participated in the climactic scene of the Persian attack. It cost two million and lasted two hours and forty minutes.

To deepen his development of alternate editing, the director decided to intersperse the frames with each other, instead of presenting them separately. But the public was not quite situated, and finally it was a huge economic disaster. It ended Triangle, and Griffith himself never recovered from his debts.

After the big bump, Griffith teamed up with three other film greats, Charles Chaplin , Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, with whom he created United Artist (a very active producer until its ruin in 1980 with Heaven’s Gate , in which it became absorbed by MGM). Unfortunately, Griffith has been so affected that he completely neglected his innovativeness and willingness to take risks.

From that moment on, he abandoned blockbusters and returned to the simplicity of his first works. It would be said that he only has a purely nutritional will. Even so, she manages to achieve some memorable titles, such as The Two Storms , with her favorite actress, Lillian Gish, as a peasant in search of help. It culminates with a spectacular sequence in which Gish’s character is swept away by the waters during the storm, while the man who has fallen in love with her tries to rescue her from her. Lillian and her sister, Dorothy Gish , led the cast of The Two Orphans , which recreates the French Revolution.

In case someone continued to accuse him of racial prejudice, Griffith also filmed with Lillian Gish the interesting Broken Lilies (also known as Other People’s Guilt ), where a young woman mistreated by her father falls in love with a Chinese nobleman. He got his start in talkies with Abraham Lincoln , a biography of the president played by the great Walter Huston , with which the filmmaker won the Oscar for best director. He went on to film a second ‘talkie’, The Struggle , from 1931, about the alcoholism problems of a man who ruins his marriage. But Griffith doesn’t quite adapt well to the new format, he had already lost favor with the public, and barely had an impact.

He decided to retire from cinema at the age of 56. He died much later, on July 23, 1948, at his California residence, from a brain hemorrhage.