D. W. Griffith

D. W. Griffith (1875-1948), American film director. Born into the impoverished Kentucky gentility, Griffith left menial casual work for smalltime acting in touring companies. He tried to improve his position by writing poems, stories, and plays, but only ever succeeded in having one poem published, and one play performed in 1907. He then worked in bit parts for New York film companies, and also sold them stories. The film company Biograph gave him the chance to direct in the middle of 1908, and his films proved successful. During the next year he directed the entire output of the Biograph company. After this some of his actors shared the directing load, but Griffith himself made 450 films up to 1913, mostly one-reelers.

Although he invented no new technical devices at all, Griffith's real contribution was in using existing means for increased dramatic effect. He was prolific in inventing expressive gestures and actions for his actors, and developed the use of faster cutting between scenes to increase the excitement in films. He was also a leader in applying different degrees of camera closeness for expressive purposes.

When Biograph refused to let him make big feature films to rival European imports such as Quo Vadis? (1912), Griffith left and joined Reliance-Majestic, where, amongst other feature films, he made The Avenging Conscience (1914), which introduced the idea of using close shots of objects, such as insects and human hands, to convey symbolic meanings and emotional states. He then made the three-hour epic on the American Civil War, The Birth of a Nation (1915), which was immensely successful and influential all over the world. The only major development in this film, beyond its scale, was the application of the theatrical technique of alternating scenes of varied nature—romantic, melancholy, comic, action packed—throughout. With the immense profits from The Birth of a Nation, Griffith then made Intolerance (1916), which told four stories from different ages about the subject simultaneously by cross-cutting between them. As the individual stories also had different simultaneous chains of action, the film proved too difficult for ordinary audiences, and lost a great deal of money.

Griffith continued making films for his own company, and finally for others, up to the beginning of sound cinema, but after Way Down East (1920), these had little success. Griffith had lost touch with audience taste and the further development of film technique, and despite attempts to get back into production, The Struggle (1931) remained his last film.