D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film

D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film PDF Author: Tom Gunning
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252063664
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Get Book

Book Description
The legendary filmmaker D. W. Griffith directed nearly 200 films during 1908 and 1909, his first years with the Biograph Company. While those one-reel films are a testament to Griffith's inspired genius as a director, they also reflect a fundamental shift in film style from "cheap amusements" to movie storytelling complete with characters and narrative impetus. In this comprehensive historical investigation, drawing on films preserved by the Library of Congress and the Museum of Modern Art, Tom Gunning reveals that the remarkable cinematic changes between 1900 and 1915 were a response to the radical reorganization within the film industry and the evolving role of film in American society. The Motion Picture Patents Company, the newly formed Film Trust, had major economic aspirations. The newly emerging industry's quest for a middle-class audience triggered Griffith's early experiments in film editing and imagery. His unique solutions permanently shaped American narrative film.

D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film

D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film PDF Author: Tom Gunning
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252063664
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Get Book

Book Description
The legendary filmmaker D. W. Griffith directed nearly 200 films during 1908 and 1909, his first years with the Biograph Company. While those one-reel films are a testament to Griffith's inspired genius as a director, they also reflect a fundamental shift in film style from "cheap amusements" to movie storytelling complete with characters and narrative impetus. In this comprehensive historical investigation, drawing on films preserved by the Library of Congress and the Museum of Modern Art, Tom Gunning reveals that the remarkable cinematic changes between 1900 and 1915 were a response to the radical reorganization within the film industry and the evolving role of film in American society. The Motion Picture Patents Company, the newly formed Film Trust, had major economic aspirations. The newly emerging industry's quest for a middle-class audience triggered Griffith's early experiments in film editing and imagery. His unique solutions permanently shaped American narrative film.

D.W. Griffith: Master of Cinema

D.W. Griffith: Master of Cinema PDF Author: Ira H. Gallen
Publisher: FriesenPress
ISBN: 1460260996
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 582

Get Book

Book Description
Exhaustively researched and accessibly written, D.W. Griffith: Master of Cinema is a remarkably comprehensive biography of the legendary director and his days creating his craft at the American Biograph Company between 1908 through 1913. Meticulously detailed, utilizing a wealth of archival documents and photographs, the book effectively details Griffith’s place as a film pioneer. Even a casual film fan can see the lines being drawn from the techniques Griffith developed to modern cinematic experience. Ira Gallen’s exploration of Griffith’s family and his early life sets the stage for his career, and give great context for who he would become. His intricate details about early stage and film paint such a vivid and evocative picture of the time that you will be truly drawn into another world while reading it.

A Companion to D. W. Griffith

A Companion to D. W. Griffith PDF Author: Charles Keil
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118341252
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 624

Get Book

Book Description
The most comprehensive volume on one of the most controversial directors in American film history A Companion to D.W. Griffith offers an exhaustive look at the first acknowledged auteur of the cinema and provides an authoritative account of the director’s life, work, and lasting filmic legacy. The text explores how Griffith’s style and status advanced along with cinema’s own development during the years when narrative became the dominant mode, when the short gave way to the feature, and when film became the pre-eminent form of mass entertainment. Griffith was at the centre of each of these changes: though a contested figure, he remains vital to any understanding of how cinema moved from nickelodeon fixture to a national pastime, playing a significant role in the cultural ethos of America. With the renewed interest in Griffith’s contributions to the film industry, A Companion to D.W. Griffith offers a scholarly look at a career that spanned more than 25 years. The editor, a leading scholar on D.W. Griffith, and the expert contributors collectively offer a unique account of one of the monumental figures in film studies. Presents the most authoritative, complete account of the director’s life, work, and lasting legacy Builds on the recent resurgence in the director’s scholarly and popular reputation Edited by a leading authority on D.W. Griffith, who has published extensively on this controversial director Offers the most up-to-date, singularly comprehensive volume on one of the monumental figures in film studies

D. W. Griffith

D. W. Griffith PDF Author: Anthony Slide
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1617032999
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book

Book Description
D. W. Griffith (1875–1948) is one of the most influential figures in the history of the motion picture. As director of The Birth of a Nation, he is also one of the most controversial. He raised the cinema to a new level of art, entertainment, and innovation, and at the same time he illustrated, for the first time, its potential to influence an audience and propagandize a cause. Collected together here are virtually all of the “interviews” given by D. W. Griffith from the first in 1914 to the last in 1948. Some of the interviews concentrate on specific films, including The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, and, most substantially, Hearts of the World, while others provide the director with an opportunity to expound on topics of personal interest, including the importance of proper exhibition of his and other’s films, and his search for truth and beauty on screen. The interviews are taken from many sources, including leading newspapers, trade papers, and fan magazines. They are often marked by humor and by a desire to please the interviewer and thus the reader. Griffith may not have been particularly enthusiastic about giving interviews, but he seems always determined to put on a good show. Ultimately, D. W. Griffith: Interviews provides the reader with a unique insight into the mind and filmmaking techniques of a director whose work and philosophy is as relevant today as it was when he was at the height of his fame in the 1910s and 1920s.

Adventures with D. W. Griffith

Adventures with D. W. Griffith PDF Author: Karl Brown
Publisher: New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 9780374100933
Category : Cadreurs - Correspondance
Languages : en
Pages : 251

Get Book

Book Description


The Films of D. W. Griffith

The Films of D. W. Griffith PDF Author: Scott Simmon
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521388207
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Get Book

Book Description
An introduction to the work of the first widely acknowledged master filmmaker.

D.W. Griffith's the Birth of a Nation

D.W. Griffith's the Birth of a Nation PDF Author: Melvyn Stokes
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199887519
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Get Book

Book Description
In this deeply researched and vividly written volume, Melvyn Stokes illuminates the origins, production, reception and continuing history of this ground-breaking, aesthetically brilliant, and yet highly controversial movie. By going back to the original archives, particularly the NAACP and D. W. Griffith Papers, Stokes explodes many of the myths surrounding The Birth of a Nation (1915). Yet the story that remains is fascinating: the longest American film of its time, Griffith's film incorporated many new features, including the first full musical score compiled for an American film. It was distributed and advertised by pioneering methods that would quickly become standard. Through the high prices charged for admission and the fact that it was shown, at first, only in "live" theaters with orchestral accompaniment, Birth played a major role in reconfiguring the American movie audience by attracting more middle-class patrons. But if the film was a milestone in the history of cinema, it was also undeniably racist. Stokes shows that the darker side of this classic movie has its origins in the racist ideas of Thomas Dixon, Jr. and Griffith's own Kentuckian background and earlier film career. The book reveals how, as the years went by, the campaign against the film became increasingly successful. In the 1920s, for example, the NAACP exploited the fact that the new Ku Klux Klan, which used Griffith's film as a recruiting and retention tool, was not just anti-black, but also anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish, as a way to mobilize new allies in opposition to the film. This crisply written book sheds light on both the film's racism and the aesthetic brilliance of Griffith's filmmaking. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the cinema.

The Birth of a Nation

The Birth of a Nation PDF Author: Robert Lang
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813520278
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book

Book Description
The birth of a nation follows the lives of two white families divided by, and enduring, the American Civil War, and includes elaborate cameos of historical events such as the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

D.W. Griffith

D.W. Griffith PDF Author: Richard Schickel
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN: 087910080X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 675

Get Book

Book Description
He transformed a nickelodeon novelty into a new art form and a powerful, glamorous American industry. He codified the rules and techniques of screen story-telling, and pioneered the conventions that brought films to life, from surging spectacle to soul-baring close-ups. A poor farm boy from the South, Griffith rose to fame with The Birth of a Nation, a cinematic masterpiece stained by the racism that infected his heritage. Though he went on to direct some of the most legendary films of the silent era, Griffith was doomed by his over-reaching drives, and he died an embittered man, shunned by the community he had largely created. His story is told here with unsparing truth and compelling narrative sweep.

D. W. Griffith

D. W. Griffith PDF Author: Iris Barry
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780870706837
Category : American cinema
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
Essay by Iris Barry.