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| D.W.
Griffith |
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| Director
/ Producer / Screenwriter / Composer |
| 1875 - 1948 |
| Born January 22,
LaGrange, Kentucky, USA |
| Key
Production Country: USA
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Key Genres:
Drama, Melodrama, Short Film, Romance |
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Collaborators: G.W.
Bitzer (Cinematographer), James Smith (Editor), Lillian Gish (Leading Player),
Kate Bruce (Leading Character Player), Robert Harron
(Leading Character Player), Carol Dempster (Leading Player), Mae Marsh (Leading Player), Hendrik
Sartov (Cinematographer), James Smith (Editor), Porter Strong (Character
Player) |
| Highly Recommended:
Intolerance (1916),
Broken Blossoms (1919) |
| Recommended:
The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912), True Heart Susie (1919), Way Down East (1920),
Orphans of the Storm (1922) |
| Worth
a Look:
A Corner in Wheat (1909), The Unchanging
Sea (1910), The Lonedale Operator (1911),
The Girl and Her Trust (1912), The Old Actor (1912), The Mothering Heart
(1913), The Birth of a
Nation (1915), The Mother and the Law (1919),
A Romance of Happy Valley (1919), Dream Street (1921), The White Rose
(1923), Isn't Life Wonderful (1924), Abraham Lincoln (1930), The
Struggle (1931) |
| Links:
[
IMDB ] [
TCMDB ] [
All-Movie
Guide ] [
Senses of Cinema: Great Directors ] [
Film Reference ]
[
PBS American Masters ] [
Gilda's Blue Book
of the Screen Article ] [
Mainly About D.W. Griffith (1922 Article) ] |
| Books:
[
D.W.
Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film: The Early Years at
Biograph ] [
D.W.
Griffith: An American Life ] [
D.W.
Griffith: American Film Master ] [
The Films of D. W. Griffith ] [
D.W. Griffith's Intolerance: Its Genesis and Its Vision ] |
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DVD's:
[
Amazon
] |
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1,000
Greatest Films: The Birth of a
Nation (1915), Intolerance (1916), Broken Blossoms (1919), True Heart
Susie (1919), Way Down East (1920) |
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"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...From the very start, he showed a remarkable
instinctive understanding of the creative potential of the
medium, using inherently cinematic techniques - changing camera
angles, intercutting, crosscutting, parallel action, camera
movement. dramatic lighting, the close-up, the full shot,
rhythmic editing, etc." - (The
MacMillan International Film Encyclopedia, 1994) |
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"American pioneer
of the silent cinema and of many of its more sophisticated
techniques. Griffith is still generally regarded as the first
great American director despite the failure of many of his later
films; and, between 1914 and 1921, when his talent and
confidence were in full flower, he was the maker of some of the
most famous and exciting films in Hollywood history." - David
Quinlan (Quinlan's Illustrated Guide to Film Directors, 1999) |
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"Griffith
devised a grammar of emotions through his expressive editing.
The focal length of his lens became a function of feeling.
Close-ups not only intensified an emotion; they shifted
characters from the republic of prose to the kingdom of poetry.
Griffith's privileged moments are still among the most beautiful
in all cinema. They belong to him alone, since they are beyond
mere technique. Griffith invented this "mere" technique, but he
also transcended it." - Andrew
Sarris (The American Cinema, 1968) |
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"A giant of the industry, Griffith more than anyone else was
responsible for creating or refining film technique into a mode
of creative expression. His genius covered writing, directing,
editing, and even advertising a film." -
William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978) |
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"Talkies, squeakies, moanies, songies, squawkies... Just give
them ten years to develop and you're going to see the greatest
artistic medium the world has known." -
D.W. Griffith |
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"Actors
should never be important. Only directors should have power and
place." - D.W. Griffith |
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