Take One (Sep-Oct 1973)

It was David Wark Griffith who is responsible — more than any other person — for the evolution of the motion picture. of Hollywood, Bitzer explained, “What Mr. Griffith saw in his mind, we put on the screen." This is not written to minimize Griffith. For what he did do was just as important as what Bitzer or Porter or even Rice had done — perhaps even more important. He was the first to use the innovations and effects together in one film for dramatic use, Or as punctuation for his stories. He brought the camera closer to the actors than any other director had dared — all the way up to their faces so he could eliminate the wild, unnatural gesticulating common in silent films where the camera was placed in what was thought to be the ideal position: in the front row of a theater to record the action as if it were a play upon a stage. For that’s basically what moving pictures were before Griffith: _ photographic recordings’ of stage plays. Despite angry cries of “Where are the actors’ feet?” from audiences and bosses, Griffith persevered, and moved his camera all over the set. Still, Griffith sensed, something was missing. Often a story and its action took too much time, stifling suspense and dramatic effect. Taking what he had learned from Porter, Griffith removed all the unnecessary action from his films and joined together only the significant parts of the story. Soon he began cutting within a scene, using as many as 50 shots where other directors used one. Later he would get on to the premise of cross-cutting, or “switching off,” as he called it, making possible what has been used so many times since Griffith that it is now a cliche — the “ride to the rescue.” Terry Ramsaye summed up Griffith’s contribution to film better than anyone else in his book, A Million and One Nights, when he said that Griffith invented the syntax of the film. Whatever you wish to call it, one thing cannot be disputed: It was David Wark Griffith who is responsible more than any other one person for the evolution of the motion picture. There is widespread dissension on what is his greatest contribution. Some say it's his use of these aforementioned techniques or his control of tempo for suspense and drama, his mastery of telling a story in dramatic form, or his development of star potential. Many say it is his concern with people. Even in his epic pictures, a personal story (e.g. Ben and Elsie in The Birth of a Nation) sits above the oppressing conditions the way a melody runs over a chugging rhythm: the picture — like the music — needs both to realize its full force. With these personal stories, Griffith managed to create some of the most permanent images in screen history. As James Hart, editor of The Man Who Invented Hollywood, Griffith's unfinished 10 autobiography, said in an_ interview, “Griffith captured moments on film the same way Sherwood Anderson did on paper.” Evelyn Baldwin, Griffith's second wife told me, “If you notice in some of his bigger films, he'll shoot a scene such as a mother and child which aren't particularly important to the story, yet suddenly there they are and they're so real that they're like somebody you know. He had this wonderful ability for Knowing people.” “He had a great sense of story, of direction, of the ability of people,” Hal Roach now says. ‘His great stars were not beautiful people; they were just good actors. He picked out one after another — people like the Gish sisters, Mae Marsh. They weren't particularly glamourous peo D.W. Griffith and the close-up MUSEUM OF MODERN ART The Birth of a Nation One confusing statement made about Griffith's contribution to film is the development of the close-up. If the close-up was in existence before Griffith, why is Griffith usually credited with it? The answer often given is that Griffith used the close-up for dramatic emphasis, a definition that is worthless without examples. Harry M. Geduld, professor of Comparative Literature at Indiana University, editor of two film books series and author of Focus On: D.W. Griffith, recently contrasted, for me, the use of the close-up before and by Griffith: “A very famous example of the early closeup is that of a hand ringing the fire-alarm bell in Porters The Life of an American Fireman (1902). Now this does serve a narrative purpose — somebody has notified the fire brigade — but it doesn't really serve any dramatic purpose in terms of character development. It could have been done in other ways and been just as effective — you could have seen an alarm bell ringing. Porter's use of the close-up very frequently was simply a device to get the story along a little bit farther. Griffith, on the other hand, used closeups to develop or reveal character or to advance the story in significant ways. Very famous examples of the way Griffith used the close-up for striking effect are Mae Marsh wringing her hands and tearing her handkerchief in Intolerance and Gus’s eyes showing us he’s a would-be rapist in The Birth of a Nation. When Griffith used the close-up, it was nearly always done the best possible way and the only way for dramatic effect.” ple, but they are associated with great pictures because of their quality. And you know, Griffith was quite a producer, too. He produced big things before anyone else thought of it.” Frank Capra says, “Griffith had a great sense of drama, of melodrama. He wasn’t much on comedy, but he was probably a poet to begin with. That poetic strain ran through all his films, whether they were love stories or whatever. He had to be some sort of poet to create that sort of art form. There have been no major improvements in film directing since Griffith, There have been technical advancements, but nothing much artistically. He’s a giant. | think he created the whole art form.” Mention D.W. Griffith to people who knew him and their faces light up. When you ask what they first think of when they hear his name, most of them say, as the late Richard S. Reynolds, Griffith's chauffeur, did, “The first thing that comes to mind is the way he looked. He was about 5'10", and weighed about 180 pounds. He was a very distinguished man, but he had a lot of put-on, too.” Lillian Gish thinks of Griffith “with that big hat down over his eyes, working. The man worked 7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day. He had no other life when | knew him. Later on, when he was married to Evelyn, he was another kind of man. But | always see him working.” Blanche Sweet, one of Griffith's first heroines (she preceded the Gish sisters at Biograph), remembers Griffith as “a man_ with swagger and no modesty, whatsoever. He had a tremendous ego, which you have to have if you're going to get anywhere. He had false modesty — pretense. He knew he was good, but he'd pretend to be very humble. He'd say, ‘My little film,’ when he'd just spent millions on it. But his ego was nothing like that of others who came along and didn't accomplish anything like he did. Without a doubt, the man was a genius. We all loved him. He had a magnificence about him, a magnitude to his spirit and ideas and great magnetism to himself. He could influence you. He had great charm.” But apparently, that ego, that self-assuredness was only a front for a tremendous feeling of insecurity, as several of his friends observed. Evelyn Baldwin says, “He used to read those reviews in the papers that called him a genius, and I’m sure they must have flattered him enormously, but | don’t think he ever really believed them.” To a certain extent, Griffith's personality was molded by what he thought was proper for a man of the 19th century theater. “He was a gentleman with a capital G — courtly, old-fashioned, basically kind — an impressive figure, theatrical in manner and voice [which was] deep and resonant and overly-enunciated in the fashion of the 19th century actor who has been an orator,” Robert M. Henderson, author of two books on Griffith, says. “He never seemed to lose that phys