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We have said that Griffith's editing allows for a more detailed and persuasive rendering of the drama. Two instances in this brief excerpt illustrate the point. In shot 21 Elsie points in the direction of Lincoln's box : for a moment it looks as if she has spotted the assassin, then the suspicion is allowed to die. The tantalising moment of uncertainty adds greatly to the suspense of the scene.
Again, before Lincoln is shot, we see him making the curious gesture — as if he were sitting in a draught — which suggests a momentary premonition of what is about to happen. It is a detail which poignantly foreshadows his sudden death.
Griffith's fundamental discovery, then, lies in his realisation that a film sequence must be made up of incomplete shots whose order and selection are governed by dramatic necessity. Where Porter's camera had impartially recorded the action from a distance (i.e., in long shot), Griffith demonstrated that the camera could play a positive part in telling the story. By splitting an event into short fragments and recording each from the most suitable camera position, he could vary the emphasis from shot to shot and thereby control the dramatic intensity of the events as the story progressed.
We have already noticed one application of this principle in the cross-cutting of four streams of action in the excerpt from The Birth of a Nation. Another application of the same principle is to be found in Griffith's use of close shots.
Early in his career, Griffith became aware of the limitations of staging an entire scene at a fixed distance from the camera. Where he wanted to convey a character's thoughts or emotions, Griffith saw that he could best do so by taking his camera closer to the actor and recording his facial expressions in greater detail. Thus, at the moment when an actor's emotional reaction became the focal point of the scene, Griffith simply cut from the establishing long shot to a closer view ; later, when the scene again reverted to broader movement, he cut back to the more comprehensive long shot.
There would be no point in quoting extensive examples of Griffith's use of close shots, for the device is completely familiar to-day. We may recall, in passing, the striking use made of it in the trial scene from Intolerance : close shots of The Dear One's hands, working in an agony of suspense, together with close shots of her anxious face, convey all we need to know of her state of mind as she awaits the court's judgment.
The introduction of extreme long shots is another example of Griffith's use of images which have no direct part in the plot and
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