D.W. GRIFFITH: FATHER OF FILM (1993) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Kevin Brownlow, David Gill
If any filmmaker can be singled out as indispensable to the early evolution of movies, it's D.W. Griffith. As Charlie Chaplin put it, "He was the teacher of us all." Griffith didn't invent motion pictures - he didn't even invent the closeup - but he had an instinctive grasp of the medium's potential, and by putting all the available pieces together, he transformed what had been a low-end novelty into an art form with its own visual language. This three-part documentary tracks Griffith's life and career from his early work as an actor through his groundbreaking shorts at Biograph to "The Birth of a Nation", "Intolerance", "Broken Blossoms" and beyond. It's a story of luck and nerve, passion and ambition, massive acclaim and eventual eclipse. Griffith turned out most of his great work between 1909 and 1921. By the time the Jazz Age dawned, his old-style romanticism was starting to seem out-of-date. He continued to make movies into the early sound era, but by then his influence on the popular imagination had slipped away. He released his last feature, "The Struggle", in 1931, and after some work as an adviser on "One Million B.C." (1940), he was a finished in Hollywood. (Longstanding rumors that he directed parts of that film are apparently untrue.) He died in 1948.
