AMERICAN MASTERS SPECIAL, AN: D.W. GRIFFITH: FATHER OF FILM (TV)
Summary
One in this documentary series that explores the lives and achievements of America's most celebrated native-born and adopted artists and performers. This program examines the life and career of pioneering film director, D.W. Griffith, the man who created, in the words of actress Lillian Gish, "the grammar of filmmaking." The program includes footage from his films; interviews with colleagues, family, and friends; still photos; and vintage newsreels. The program begins by examines Griffith's childhood, his early career as an actor, his quick rise through the ranks to become Biograph's resident film director, and the creation of his masterpiece, "The Birth of a Nation" in 1915. Topics covered include: Griffith's birth into poverty on a small Kentucky farm; the roots of his complex and often contradictory nature in his parents -- Mary Oglesby, a strict religious woman, and Jake Griffith, an alcoholic Civil War veteran; elements of Griffith's rural boyhood in his adult film work; Griffith's desire as a teenager to educate himself and his discovery of the theater at age seventeen; the ten years Griffith worked across the country as an actor and fledgling playwright, professionally known as Lawrence Griffith; his marriage, in 1906, to actress Linda Arvidson, with whom he moved to New York City and collaborated on plays; Griffith's work as a bit player in movies for the Edison and Biograph companies; his move into directing after only six months at Biograph, soon becoming the company's sole director; his prolific output for Biograph, where he favored melodrama and gave young Mack Sennett his first work directing comedy; Griffith's growing reputation in the industry, as he began shooting on location, using film for social criticism, and raising editing to an art form; Griffith as both a product of the Victorian age who felt a duty to "inform and uplift" the public and a man who despised other "uplifters"; Griffith's rehearsal process with his film stock company of actors, which soon included the sisters Lillian and Dorothy Gish; Griffith's growing mastery of cross-cutting and manipulating time and space, which he used for climactic race sequences; Griffith's influence in increasing the average number of shots in one-reelers; Biograph's rise to the position of industry leader; the growing middle-class audience for films; Griffith's admiration for the Italian epics of eight reels or more, leading him to make "Judith of Bethulia"; the commercial pressures to produce formula fare, leading Griffith to leave Biograph with his players in tow; the genesis and financing of "The Birth of a Nation," Griffith's landmark feature-length film about the Civil War, based on a play by Thomas Dixon, Jr.; its intensive rehearsal process; shooting the huge battle scenes; the influence of the Civil War stories from Griffith's father on the film; Griffith's brilliant combination of the spectacular and intimate in "The Birth of a Nation"; the film's stereotypical, inflammatory depiction of blacks, and its highly positive portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan; the reaction of blacks to the film; minor riots in towns exhibiting the feature; whether Griffith was a conscious racist; whether the film contributed to the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the U.S.; the film's huge profits, which created mogul distributors like Louis B. Mayer and led to movie palaces for the burgeoning middle-class; and Griffith as the inventor of film as both propaganda and art. Includes footage of the following: a newsreel of Griffith's funeral in Crestwood, Kentucky, in 1948; "The Greatest Question (1919); "A Romance of Happy Valley" (1919); "The Great Train Robbery" (1903); "Rescued From an Eagle's Nest," "A Calamitous Elopement," "The Princess and the Vase," "At the French Ball" and "The Adventures of Dollie" (1908); "Those Awful Hats," "The Curtain Pole" and "What Drink Did" (1909); "As It Is in Life" (1910); "The Country Doctor" (1909); "In the Border States" and "Faithful" (1910); "Love in the Hills" (1911); "A Corner in Wheat" (1909); "The Reformers" (1913); "An Unseen Enemy," "The Girl and Her Trust" and "A Beast at Bay" (1912); "The Battle at Elderbush Gulch" (1913); "The Massacre" (1912); "Bobby, the Coward" (1911); "The Musketeers of Pig Alley" (1912); "The Mothering Heart" and "Judith of Bethulia" (1913); "The Birth a Nation" (1915); "Prologue: The Birth of a Nation" (Sound Re-issue, 1930); and "The Rose of Kentucky" (1911). Includes interviews with and/or footage of the following individuals: actress Lillian Gish; director Albert S. Rogell; Griffith's former wife, actress Evelyn Baldwin Kunze; actors Mary Pickford, Richard Barthelmess, and Blanche Sweet; Griffith's cousin Francis Oglesby; his boyhood friend Edmund Rucker; film historian Russell Merritt; Griffith's great niece Gerrie Griffith Reichard; Emily Wilson; D.W. Griffith, as a film actor; actress and Griffith's former wife Linda Arvidson; director Mack Sennett in an early acting role; film curator Eileen Bowser; actresses Dorothy Gish and Olive Carey; assistant cameraman Karl Brown; investor Roy Aitken; actors Henry Walthall and Mae Marsh; journalist Adela Rogers St. Johns; scenarist Anita Loos; historian John Hope Franklin; William Walker, who saw "The Birth of a Nation" in a blacks-only theater in 1916; and film historian Russell Merritt.
Next, Griffith's work during the World War I period is explored, when he was at the peak of his artistic and commercial power. Topics covered include: the way the small-scale social drama "The Mother and the Law" ballooned into another innovative epic; the ambitious "Intolerance" (1916), which related stories about the industrial era, Jesus Christ, the Hugenots, and Ancient Babylon; the film's theme as a reaction to Griffith's feelings of persecution over the censorship of "The Birth of a Nation"; the construction of a massive Babylon set for "Intolerance"; the way its dazzling crowd scenes were filmed; Griffith's revolutionary use of intercutting during the film's climax; the mixed critical and public response to the film, which Griffith re-worked and edited for some time; the reason Griffith, who objected to war, made "Hearts of the World" (1918), an allied propaganda war film; Griffith's filming in Europe during the war with his regular players, including Lillian Gish; President Woodrow Wilson's concerns about the film's graphic atrocity scenes; the lurid and manipulative box-office campaign that made the film a hit with the public and silenced critics by equating criticism of the the film with unpatriotic behavior; contrasting "Intolerance" and "The Birth of a Nation" -- both anti-war films -- with "Hearts of the World"; the new direction Griffith took with "Broken Blossoms" (1919), a film about an English slum girl who falls in love with a Chinese man; Griffith's sensitive portrayal of the Chinese man, as opposed to negative Asian stereotypes in U.S. films at this time; the dramatic new look of "Broken Blossoms," which employed an impressionistic use of setting, light, and music, and dramatic close-ups, once again influencing cinema worldwide; Griffith's decision to promote "Broken Blossoms" as perhaps the first "art film" when producer Adolph Zukor expressed concern that its grim ending would hamper its commercial prospects; the film's high critical praise; Griffith's move with his company of players to an estate in Mamaroneck, New York, where he hoped for creative independence; Griffith's involvement with actress Carol Dempster; the increasing sophistication of films, such as those by Cecil B. DeMille and Erich Von Stroheim, compared to Griffith's old-fashioned choice of material for his next major film -- "Way Down East" (1920), based on a dated, melodramatic play; the intensive rehearsals and preparation; the shooting of the famous scene in which Lillian Gish is stranded on the ice floes; the sudden deaths of regular players Clarine Seymour and Bobby Harron, forever changing the company; and the huge popular and critical success of "Way Down East." Includes interviews with and/or footage of the following individuals: actors Robert (Bobby) Harron and Mae Marsh; assistant camerman Karl Brown; actress Constance Talmadge; scenarist Anita Loos; actresses Lillian Gish and Blanche Sweet; director Andrew L. Stone; the British Minister of Information, Lord Beaverbrook; Prime Minister David Lloyd George; Bobby Harron's sister, Edna Harron; playwright/actor Noel Coward in his film debut as an actor; director Erich Von Stroheim; actress Dorothy Gish; historian John Hope Franklin; actors Richard Barthelmess and Donald Crisp; author Edward Wagenknecht; actresses Clarine Seymour and Carol Dempster; Gish's stunt-double Katherine Johnston; and Vermont resident Milton Roberts. Also includes footage from the following films: "Cabiria" (1914, Italy), "The Battle of the Somme" (1916), "The Cheat" (1915), "That Chink at Golden Gulch" (1910).
Next, Griffith's decline as America enters the Jazz Age and the Great Depression is explored. Topics covered and film clips include the following: Griffith's return to the historical melodrama with "Orphans of the Storm" (1921), set during the French Revolution; Griffith's perfection of his cross-cutting technique in the guillotine scene; the tragic death of an extra while filming a battle scene; the increasing appetite for frivolous escapism rather than Griffith's social and historical dramas; his loss of two brilliant company members -- Lillian Gish, who left for an independent company, and Billy Bitzer, who suffered from alcoholism; the high overhead at the Mamaroneck studio, leading Griffith to make low-budget "pot-boilers" to cover costs; the ironic cost overruns on these ostensibly "quickie" films, due to his perfectionism; Griffith's early attempt at sound with "Dream Street" (1921); his inability to keep up with a rapidly changing America; his historical epic, "America" (1924), an extravagant and costly re-creation of colonial history which failed at the box office; Griffith's increasing financial difficulties; his journey to Germany, where he filmed "Isn't Life Wonderful" (1924), about the plight of the humiliated German people in an economically devastated country; his desire to use film in a campaign to lighten German reparations; the commercial pressures that led Griffith to change his German protagonists to Poles; the financially disastrous "The Sorrows of Satan" (1926), which he felt Paramount sabotaged, while the studio blamed him for lavish spending; Griffith's devastation over the loss of Carol Dempster, who left him at this low point in his career; his increasing drinking problem; his first real talking film, "Lincoln" (1930), a box-office failure that still revealed the expressive possibilities of talking films; the making of Griffith's "The Struggle" (1931), a film about alcoholism that mirrored his own fears; comments about the film by actress Evelyn Baldwin, who later became his wife; the disastrous critical and public response to "The Struggle"; Griffith's release of a sound version of "The Birth of a Nation"; his return to the family in Kentucky he continued to support, despite his dwindling fortune; his aborted attempt to remake "Broken Blossoms" in England in 1935; his inability to get work in Hollywood due to industry fears about his legendary independence and spending habits; a landmark Griffith retrospective, mounted by Iris Barry at the Museum of Modern Art, which reawakened critics and public alike to Griffith's artistry; misconceptions about his contributions to the cinema; the drinking and womanizing that led to Griffith and Evelyn's divorce in 1947; his lonely, neglected final years in Los Angeles until his death in 1948; his memorial service at the Hollywood Masonic Temple; and a modest ceremony in Kentucky in 1950. Includes interviews with and/or footage of the following individuals: actress Lillian Gish; extra Nellie Battipaglia; studio carpenter Joe Dibuono; actor William J. Walsh; cameraman Billy Bitzer; actors Carol Dempster and Henry Hull; studio "rainmakers" Harry Sullivan and Thomas Vidile; film historian Russell Merritt; historian Miles Kreuger; extra James Crane; author Edward Wagenknecht; Mamaroneck resident Emily Wilson; actors Neil Hamilton, Ricardo Cortez, and Adolphe Menjou; cameraman Stanley Cortez; actor Douglas Fairbanks; director Erich Von Stroheim; sound recordist Ed Bernds; actor Walter Huston; actress and former wife Evelyn Baldwin Kunze; actors Hal Skelly and Zita Johann; director Andrew L. Stone; film historian Thomas Cripps; great nephew Tommy Duncan; actress Bette Davis; MGM story editor Samuel Marx; film curator Eileen Bowser; actor William Bakewell; actor/director Charlie Chaplin, directors Mack Sennett and Cecil B. DeMille; Will H. Hays; actress Madame Sul Te Wan; studio head Louis B. Mayer; great niece Gerrie Griffith Reichard; and actors Mary Pickford and Richard Barthelmess. Other film clips include "One Exciting Night" (1922), "Prologue: The Birth of a Nation" (Sound Re-issue, 1930) and "The Girl and Her Trust" (1912).
Details
- NETWORK: PBS WNET New York, NY
- DATE: March 24, 1993 8:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:55:28
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: T:44852
- GENRE: Documentary
- SUBJECT HEADING: Documentary; Biography; Films - Production and direction
- SERIES RUN: PBS - TV series, 1986-
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Susan Lacy … Executive Producer
- Ian Martin … Executive Producer
- Lois Dino … Coordinating Producer
- Kevin Brownlow … Producer, Director
- David Gill … Producer, Director
- Patrick Stanbury … Associate Producer
- Carl Davis … Music by
- Nic Raine … Music by
- Philip Appleby … Music by
- Thomas Wagner … Theme Music by
- Harry Rabinowitz … Conductor
- Sam Wanamaker … Narrator
- Harry Aitken
- Roy Aitken
- William Bakewell
- Evelyn Baldwin
- Iris Barry
- Richard Barthelmess
- Nellie Battipaglia
- Ed Bernds
- William G. Bitzer
- Eileen Bowser
- Karl Brown
- Olive Carey
- Charlie Chaplin
- Ricardo Cortez
- Stanley Cortez
- Noel Coward
- James Crane
- Thomas Cripps
- Donald Crisp
- Bette Davis
- Cecil B. DeMille
- Carol Dempster
- Joe DiBuono
- Thomas Dixon
- Tommy Duncan
- Douglas Fairbanks
- John Hope Franklin
- David Lloyd George
- Dorothy Gish
- Lillian Gish
- D.W. Griffith
- Jacob Wark Griffith
- Linda Arvidson Griffith
- Mary Oglesby Griffith
- Neil Hamilton
- Bobby Harron
- Edna Harron
- Will H. Hays
- Henry Hull
- Walter Huston
- Thomas Ince
- Zita Johann
- Katherine Johnston
- Miles Kreuger
- Evelyn Baldwin Kunze
- Anita Loos
- Madame Sul Te Wan
- Mae Marsh
- Samuel Marx
- Louis B. Mayer
- Adolphe Menjou
- Russell Merritt
- Francis Oglesby
- Mary Pickford
- Gerrie Griffith Reichard
- Milton Roberts
- Albert S. Rogell
- Edmund Rucker
- Mack Sennett
- Clarine Seymour
- Hal Skelly
- Adela Rogers St. Johns
- Andrew L. Stone
- Erich Von Stroheim
- Harry Sullivan
- Blanche Sweet
- Constance Talmadge
- Thomas Vidile
- Edward Wagenknecht
- William Walker
- William J. Walsh
- Henry B. Walthall
- Emily Wilson
- Woodrow Wilson
- Adolph Zukor