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Griffith and the Rise of Hollywood – Paul O'dell 1970

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Griffith and the Rise of Hollywood – Paul O'dell 1970 GRIFFJTH AND ..fHE RISE OF HOLLYWOOD ~ <)~ 'W 2\~6..IO& . by Paul O'Dell ' Above: Robert Harron \J.4 ~~~~~ '"'3 ~ t-l-CM-M"' - ~ ' ' (; fu_G~ y....AA~· Victory t'arade: Miriam Cooper, Lillian Gish an~ Henry B. Walthall in KKK uniferm. ln bdckgrou~ Elmer Clifton as Phil Stoneman and Spottiswoode Aiken lasting a full minute. Here with wild action, shots follow each other al a rate of under three seconds each. After those quick shots comes a shot of the Klan riding to the rescue This sirigle shot, lasting aim~ eight seconds, is followed by yet anQther sequence at tlle cabini !hi! time a group of fourteen shots and an ov.erall tunning time of fort):· three seconds. Another shot of the Kla11, and again the cabin, but tbi 34 " Out of the c~adle endless/)' rocki11g'' Lillian Gis/1 _b IY. 43 Acknowledgements \VJSJi 'fO ~HANK th.c following fo.t the h~p and assistanee tlw I. they have given to me 1n the preparation of this b0ok: Kevin Bro · lo\Y, Leslie Flint, John Lanchbcry, Bcr.t Langdon, Jill O'Dell, Anth~~,: Slide and. above all, Harold Dunham. · 'l'hc chapter on Thomns H. Ince was prepared with the special he! of Mrs. Thon1ns Ince and George C. Pratt of George Eastman House. p page ,. 1 J N ''I'1~0DUCTION f 2 'J"I1E BIRTH OF A NATION" 13 3 INTOLERANCE 36 4 i:rHOMAS HARP!t:R. TN(E 93 5 THE DENIAL OF SPECTACLE: TRUE HEl\RT SUSIE TO BRO,EN BLQSS.~MS · 116 6 INTO THE TWE1NTIES: WAY DOWN EAST AN® ORPHANS PF TRE 'S'fORM [28 7 THE STAR SYSTEM 140 BIBLIOGRAPHY lS1 INDEX 160 Tl1is Edi ti0n Publisl1ecl by Arrangement With A. S. Barnes 8c Co., Inc. FIRST PUBLISHED 1970 Copyright © 1970 by Paul O'Dell Liorary of Congress Catalog Car-d No. 71-119640 Printed in the United States of America i . lnt~oduct i on AVID WARK GRIFFITH HAS TENDED TO BECOME, in re­ D cent years, a figure in cinema history attributed with innovation in fi lm technique; the close-up, the flashback, cross-cutting have all appeared in connecti0n with his name. And so it is that he is now in dan­ ger of achieving a widespread reputation merely as a technician: an in· vcntor of cinematography. This does justice neither to Griffith himself n0r to his woiik. It may very weU be that he did '\invent'' all these ideas 0f picto11iaJI presentation-but there is much evidence to suggest that he did neat-and if he did not, then he certainly developed their use 'Ito startling effect. But these ideasJ these technique~ 'verc for him only a means towards an e nd ~ never the. ultimate distinguishing factor of his pictures. Nor \Vas he dependent on these techniques in order to produce a film which stood above all contcn1porary \\forks. Many of his earl y pictures c0ntain n0 cl0se-ups, no flashbacks, no camera move­ ment, n 0 complicated editing techniques, and no innovations. But nevertheless they are indisputably fi lms of high artistic quality. Many post-Intolerance films also contain few, if any, of the .. innovations'' attributed to Griffi th, and ~et th e~ are outstanding \Yorks nonetheless. It is un fortuna t e~ind ecd it could be tragic-that a n1an \Vho strove so hard to perfect the cinema as a nl.cdium for the stin1ulation of ideas should also have been the one who rcc0gnisad the real potential of an embryo airt form. The fact remains that W·hUc the technical achievements of D. W. Griffi th have become the main reason for his importance in fi lm history, bis purely artistic achievements. the very reason why tic ever 1made films at all, have tcndccl to bccoinc relatively obscured. The work o~ an artist is the door to his soul: \vhatcvcr we sec written about the artist, we will never get c l o~cr to the rnan himself than through his work. David Wark Griffith produced a tren1cndous v0ltunc of work durjng the twenty-three years he spent making motion pictures. It is via these fi lms-those that remain-that we.: can co1nc to a real under­ standing of Gritn th , because into these films he poured all of his ideas 7 6. Into the Twenties: Way Down East and Orphans of the Storm NT .. RMS OF CINEMA HISTORY, Griffith \Vas the man \Yho fired I the star.ting-pistoJ. It was he who gave the medium what it required to develop and expand. There came a time when he inevitably appeared to have been "left behind," a "non-starter.,, It was to happen that he wouJd be attacked again and again for his refusal to participate in the race. "¥our refusal to face the world," wrote one critic, "is making you more and more a sentimentalist. You see passion in terms of cooing doves or the falling of a ro e petal ... your lack of contact with life makes you deficient in humor. In other words your splendid unsophisti .. catic.'>n is .a menace to you-and to pictures.' Thus wrote James Quirk in 1924, cruelly cutting dov.'n the man who had vif~ually fum ished nim with a job (inasmuch as Griffith had given to the movies what no o~r individual had even come near to possessing). What Quirk failed to recogni e ·was that Gr.iffith was not a man to be swept along in the tide of fashion. Why should he follow others? How could he 1folfow others, when in effect they were following his precepts? WaJ Down East was Griffith's 10ngest picture since Intolerance, and ran for more than three hours. In ·terms of construction, it re1ies en finely interwoven detail rather than the more instantly irecognisa'b1e cross-cutting that distingui heel his earlier work. In the openiQ.g sequences for example, hen Anna is tricked in!o an illegal marriage to Sander­ son, the ceremony itself is full of visual commentary, \vith the ting falling to the floor, cutting to Bartlett (played by Richard Barthelmes$) wakjng suddenly. f.rom a nightmare-and this before any knowledge on any,one~s part of their t\vo fates and the way they w.ill eventually come together. Lillian Gish as Anna has received much deserved praise for her ork in this . icture, especiaHy for ber superhuman feats amol!g the ice-floes in the cHmaotic seq.ueuc s of the picture. The manner in W·hich he receives the new~ of her false .marr!age, in the knowledge that sbe i pregnant> is yet another tr•umph for her acting ability under Griffit·h. T he scene in which she baptises her own child as it is dying also comes 128 ~·ay Down East: the loveless marriage. Lowell i 't1mat1 and Lillian Gish as Sanderson and Anna ~to being one of Griffith~ supreme cinematic achievement . ~e also adds a sense of frightening reaH m to the seen in hich . ~told that her baby is dead. For a second or. two he tare blan ly ''ospace, then slowly begins to hake her- tie ad from idc to i . ~~enly, as ifi the news trikes her like some phy ical blow h · ~IYA' s hcli Head back, and as if goin1g into an epileptic tit, her whol •.• jy t1ffens and she sit choking and creaming. 129 "'n Ja t: and Anna Way Down East: A1nna turned out into the snow. Right to left, Burr Macki1Jtosh, Kate Bruce, Vivia Ogdtn, Lowell Shc~rnu11t, Lillian· Gish, M(~ry Hay, Creighton f1ale , George evill ·. Ri<:hard Barthe/mess and Edgar Nelson needs dialogue for it$ effectiveness. On the contrary, this scene is of great emotional intensity, and this intensity is achieved simply by Grif­ fitb~ editing technique. Once again, he uses visual con1111entary on the basic situation to i:eplace long equences where there should be dialogue. Anna is sent out into the blizzard, and David runs after her. There follows some really remarkable photography, hots in which Anna's cape eems to vanish and reappear behind ·trees and snowdrift clo c· ups of nna, whose eyelashes see)ll to have icicles on th{(Ill, n.nd tbis equenc leads directly to the chase on the ice-floes. Tliis equenGe bas achieved a great deal of not<;>riety over th· years, and seen1 to hav~ bce<.Jme the oniy p(\rt f Way Down East that is now 132 -iind social realism: Schildkrau t and Gish at the foot of the guilloti11e xerci e care not to exchange our good govcrnn1ent for Bol ttcvi ·m • license .' n familiar ''Last Minute Re cue towar.d the end of reel twelve 'c as exciting and as beautifull~ executed as e ha c by now come to Uftct from Gr:iffith. Cutting between the guillotine and Henriette Lillian Gish~ and Danton (Monte Blue) Pacing on horseback with 'r pardon, fhe equcnce is a p rfcct example ofi " trctchcd action, 0 IU'rihich the time taken for Lilli n Gish to walk three paCl' • r r c ample. the completed sequ nee, now intereut with other a tion, • kc twic~' maybe three times as long. This cr.v to build th u. pen · ina much Hcreates an almost unbearable sen e _of impaticnc . The crowd s~ene nave been likened to thos of The Birth o/ l1 ~orion, and in the emoti nal cffect they crt;atc 'thi i ertainly valid. Griffith's ap,proach to their arrangement had ahcred con i erabJy during I J Epic extravagance: Joseph Schildkraut and Lillian Gish in Orphans of the Storm the rphan ,' creating a necessary condition for the story with the least po ible expenditure of effort.'' The parallel with those early pictures.
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