The film answers back : an historical appreciation of the cinema (1939)

The philosophy of D. W. Griffith was to the American cinema what the philosophy of the days of George Washington was to the American Constitution. It was in fact the reflection of the American drive to get down to bed-rock and the fundamentals of human life. Mans Genesis was among the first of his one-reelers when he started in pictures. The audacity of such an attempt with such limited means is almost breath-taking. There is no doubt that this disregard of difficulty was the very spirit of pioneering America. When, later, he attains independence in the production of a picture, Griffith takes on nothing less than the birth of a nation! In his next picture, the indomitable Griffith attacks the subject of intolerance on a universal and historical scale. Griffith, the giant, striding across time and space, hardly realized how far ahead he was travelling beyond the mass comprehension of his time. Neither America nor any other part of the world was yet ready for the advanced outlook contained in Intolerance. The great innovator wTas now to feel the financial curb in the lukewarm reception accorded to this film. Henceforth, his pictures, whilst they still retained that indomitable universal vision, were rendered through one set of characters. His best-remembered productions are Hearts of the World, which showed the life of ordinary folk behind the lines during war-time, and Orphans of the Storm, which, again, was a reflection of his concern for ordinary people during great historical upheavals. This picture had the French Revolution as its background. When the Great War ended, Carl Laemmle and very many others in the U.S.A. were deeply concerned with the effects of blockade and inflation upon the German people, and were arranging shipments of food for their relief. Griffith made a -film on the plight of starving 256