Snapshot: Episode Three: 1900s - DW Griffith

The name DW Griffith is today synonymous with racism.  Between 1908 and his enforced retirement in 1931 he directed 534 films on a wide variety of subjects yet he remains best known for the 1915 masterpiece “The Birth of a Nation”, the first great feature of the American cinema.  An epic covering the periods immediately before, during and after the United States Civil war, “The Birth of Nation” was groundbreaking on every single level: length, structure, artistic ambition, technical prowess, subtly of acting, critical respectability and box office performance.  It was also an unspeakable articulation of prejudice; a defence, as one of its southern ‘gentlemen’ characters puts it, of the “Aryan birthright”; a glorification of the Ku Klux Klan.

All this needs to be said first and foremost about Griffith.  Part of his paradox is that while he did more than any other single figure to turn the cinema into the twentieth century’s preeminent art form his attitudes and sensitivities were grounded in the nineteenth.  Melodrama was his stock and trade: he failed at it as an actor and playwright upon the stage but employed it brilliantly to free the new medium from staid theatrical conventions of composition and performance.  It is important to remember that his world view, his racism and sentimental piety, was considered to be old fashioned and reactionary, that his films succeeded largely in spite of these characteristics rather than because of them.  “The Birth of a Nation”, as financially successful as it was (some claim it as amongst the most profitable films of all time) resulted in race riots and legitimate protest and was considerably censored in some states.

Although Griffith, the son of a Confederate officer, had a life long fascination with the Civil War, those films which dealt with it directly make up only a small part of his immense output.  A vast amount of his work, particularly the hundreds of shorts he made prior to “The Birth of a Nation”, has been posted on You Tube.  To watch these century old artefacts is to marvel at an inventive, curious and prolific artist: not all of them achieve greatness, but all are touched by greatness. 

One short in particular stands out.  “A Corner in Wheat”, released in 1909, is noteworthy  for the framing and trademark Griffith parallel editing and for a theme that is borderline socialist.  Opening with a carefully composed shot of farmers and their wives about to sew a wheat crop it quickly progresses into more frenzied scenes at a stock market as a greedy capitalist corners the market on the product.  Subsequent intercutting between the obscene opulence of the wheat king’s party life style and those queuing for bread they cannot now afford is masterfully handled as is the eventual fate of the businessman, drowning in his produce as police struggle to contain starving rioters.

The message in a Griffith film is never as subtle as the craft.  However, the precision of his eye, the delicate touch with actors, the profound understanding of pace and drama in editing, changed the medium forever.