Imagine that Stephen Spielberg’s carerr as a director is over and way in the past. Then suppose that the one film chosen to represent him is THE COLOR PURPLE. Forgotten are JAWS, E.T., SCHINDLER’S LIST, and the recent MUNICH not to mention the rest of his output. Would that be a fair assessment of Spielberg’s career as a director? I think not.
Such an unfair assessment is the unfortunate case with pioneer movie director D.W. Griffith. Out of a 23 year career that lasted from 1908 to 1931 and encompassed 34 feature films and more than 450 one reelers (the industry standard before feature length films began to appear around 1912), Griffith today is remembered only for the still controversial BIRTH OF A NATION from 1915.
While historically important as the first major American feature length film (it runs 194 minutes and is divided into 2 parts), BIRTH was then and remains today a subject of intense controversy because of its blatant racism although It offends far more people today than it did 90 years ago. The source material was a then popular novel and later play of the day called THE CLANSMAN which was written by Shelby NC native and Wake Forest graduate Thomas F. Dixon.
It was the second of a three book set known as the “Reconstruction Trilogy”. In it Dixon presents a view of the post-Civil War South that glorifies the Ku Klux Klan and denigrates African-Americans by depicting them as illiterate, lazy, and cruel. THE CLANSMAN was the original title of the film when BIRTH OF A NATION premiered in Los Angeles in 1915 but it was later changed by Dixon when the film later premiered in New York. The movie’s portrayal of African-Americans helped to brand Griffith as a racist of the first order which is understandable but inaccurate when you look at Griffith’s output as a whole.
Before he made BIRTH, Griffith had directed a number of short films in New York that dealt head on with many pressing social issues of the day. Some of the topics covered were greed and exploitation of the poor (THE CORNER IN WHEAT), drug addiction (FOR HIS SON), the mistreatment of Native Americans (THE RED MAN’S VIEW), and media censorship (THE REFORMERS). He even made an anti-Klan film (THE WHITE ROSE OF KENTUCKY) three years before BIRTH as well as the first gangster movie (THE MUSKETEERS OF PIG ALLEY).
By 1912 Griffith had left New York for California as had most of the fledgling movie industry to take advantage of the great weather and cheap labor. After finishing BIRTH, he began a small scale drama of contemporary social injustice entitled THE MOTHER AND THE LAW. While working on it he saw the 1914 Italian historical epic CABIRIA and then conceived the idea of expanding his film’s setting into different periods of history. He would called the movie INTOLERANCE partially in response to negative criticism of BIRTH OF A NATION.
In addition to its modern story, INTOLERANCE would have stories set during Christ’s crucifixion, the St Bartholomew Day’s Massacre of 1572 in France, and most spectacularly of all, the downfall of Babylon in 539 B.C. Each story would focus on an example of religious or social intolerance or both. It was an ambitious undertaking to say the least. Also ambitious was Griffith’s idea of not telling the four stories in sequence but switching back and forth between them with ever increasing frequency as the movie progresses.
Everything about the movie was conceived on a grand scale. It was the most expensive movie ever made at that time. Adjusting for inflation, it would cost over 500 million to make INTOLERANCE today. It literally employed a cast of thousands and featured the largest set ever built up until then – the Ancient Babylon set which is famous in photos of cinema history. Every visual trick known at the time was used – extreme close-ups, rapid-fire editing, and seemingly impossible tracking shots.
It was a film so far ahead of its time that, even today, audiences still have difficulty processing it, even after 90 years. From today’s perspective, parts of INTOLERANCE seem melodramatic and naive in its message of peace and love (remember THE STRAWBERRY STATEMENT and BILLY JACK?), or way too long (like Peter Jackson’s remake of KING KONG). It does, however, qualify as one of the most influential films ever made. Directors from Cecil B. De Mille to Abel Gance and especially Sergei Eisenstein borrowed heavily from it while later filmmakers borrowed from them.
After a successful opening and initial good box office, the Anti-War & Pro-Tolerance message of INTOLERANCE ran afoul of the U.S. entry into World War I and attendance and revenues dried up. The film lost money and Griffith was never on firm financial footing again despite being one of the founding members of United Artists and having two more runaway successes in BROKEN BLOSSOMS (1919) and WAY DOWN EAST (1920). His social concerns along with a Victorian outlook on male-female relationships did not play well with the Jazz Age audiences of the 1920s. By 1932 he was out of the movie business for good. He died a proud and bitter alcoholic in 1948 at the age of 73.
In 1953 the Directors Guild of America (DGA) honored Griffith by renaming its highest award after him. But in 1999, he became a victim of Political Correctness – the DGA Board of Directors (without consulting its members) voted to take his name off the award because of the negative portrayals of African-Americans in BIRTH OF A NATION. After numerous protests, the DGA voted not to rename the award.
Despite his ill treatment from the DGA, Griffith has not been forgotten by lovers of old movies and movie history. Many of his movies are now available in quality home editions. These include INTOLERANCE, BROKEN BLOSSOMS, WAY DOWN EAST, and even BIRTH OF A NATION. Several of the important one reelers are available as well. Beware of low cost, budget editions of Griffith’s movies. They utilize bad prints, are transferred at the wrong speed (too fast) and have improper musical accompaniment.
The Capsule Critic 