TMI (Today’s Movie Info)
February: Director’s Month
D.W. GRIFFITH (1875-1948) grew up in Kentucky as the son of a Confederate Army Colonel and Civil War hero. His father’s war stories would greatly influence Griffith’s film career. Remarkably, Griffith made over 450 short films and 80 feature length films (sometimes at the rate of two per week!). He was celebrated for his visionary and ground-breaking techniques (cross-cutting, split-screen, flashbacks, etc), but was also labeled a racist due to the nature of some of his films. In 1910, he was credited with making the first film in Hollywood, In Old California. Many of the biggest silent film stars got their start in a Griffith film: Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, Mack Sennett, Lionel Barrymore. His renowned 1915 historical classic The Birth of a Nation was the first film shown in the White House (President Woodrow Wilson). The film is considered the birth of American cinema, but it also caused race riots throughout the country. In 1920, he became one of the founders of United Artists, along with Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. Griffith only made two “talkies”. After the second, he retired stating “We do not want now and we never shall want the human voice with our films”. He is credited with the invention of false eyelashes (for use in his film Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916) … and also credited with the phrase “lights, camera, action”, which is still used today by filmmakers.
Movie Reviews from the Dark 