Wid's year book (1918)

WHERE ARE THEIR LEGS? the audience shouted They thought the picture was out of focus. They stamped their feet, they hissed. AND THEN CAME APPLAUSE ! ! It was in a little New York Motion Picture Theatre when spectators first saw the CLOSE-UP. They had always seen figures in the far-off. And here was a face as full and close as a mother’s over a cradle-bed. It startled, it shocked, it delighted. David Wark Griffith created the close-up, and later came other historic improvements from the ever-searching brain of that genius, the “cut-back” bringing suspense to the films, the “fade-away,” the “long-shot,” and on and on. Do you realize when you see a motion picture, no matter who the producer, you see a product done with the tools Mr. Griffith created? Others use them now, but he placed them in their hands and taught them how. He exacts no tribute or royalty for their use. He gives them freely to the world. “Mr. Griffith is the great legendary figure of the films, the great inventor and innovator of their youth, yet also the great consistent, progressing genius of today. As inventor of the ‘close-up’ and ‘cut-back’ and half a dozen other technical devices, he might be content to occupy the position of a Masolina, discoverer of perspective and the art of painting. Yet each new production demonstrates that he is a Masaccio as well — an artist of full and splendid naturalistic powers. His is an art of pure emotion which can go beneath thought, beneath belief, beneath ideals, down to the brute fact of emotional psychology.” — (The New Republic.) # “With all respect to his rivals, Mr. Griffith has demonstrated his claim to the sole and only right to make a picture that will go on the big time and stay there at two dollars.” — (Washington, D. C., Heralffi) DAVID WARK GRIFFITH “Griffith is the One Genius of the Films. He Stands Supreme and Alone.” — (Indianapolis Star.) Producer of “Hearts of the World,” now breaking all records in every principal city throughout the United States.