In the 1950’s, Simon and Schuster started publishing a coffee table compendium called The Movies. I recently bought an original pressing at a used bookstore. It contains not just a dozen pages dedicated to D.W. Griffith, but multiple spreads to the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation specifically. It was taken as a given by this book, as a reflection of the industry and canon at the time, that Griffith was cinema’s most influential director and Nation cinema’s most important work. How times have changed: In the 2022 Sight and Sound poll, only one voter among thousands put The Birth of a Nation as one of his ten picks for canonically great films, and you almost never see Griffith cited among the legends except as a pioneer. And even as an innovator, historians have poked holes in his legacy for getting credit for others’ work.
I find Griffith to be a deeply fascinating though undeniably dated filmmaker. Even setting aside the racism and yellow-face, his films are preachy and moralizing, often in woefully crusty ways. Yet his craft endures in monumental ways, and I can’t even imagine what it looked like to filmgoers of his time. In the 1910’s, he crystallized the very idea of a blockbuster feature film. His films popularized and codified many of the medium’s basic composition and editing techniques that are so fundamental it’s almost silly to describe them. He could capture mood and emotion as well as nearly anyone from the era, not to mention breathless danger and colossal scope. So, as stodgy and occasionally downright evil as his work often was (The Birth of a Nation is as abhorrent as its modern reputation would suggest), the grandfather of American big-budget cinema may very well be underrated among modern movie fans.
Podcast Episodes
Chronological
A few words on “Is It Good?” ratings for early cinema
- The Birth of a Nation (1915) (Not Good)
- Intolerance (1916) (Good)
- Scarlet Days (1919) (Not Good)
- Broken Blossoms (1919) (Good)
- Way Down East (1920) (Not Very Good)
- Orphans of the Storm (1921) (Good)
By Rating
A few words on “Is It Good?” ratings for early cinema
Good (5/8)
Not Very Good (3/8)
Not Good (2/8)
Last Updated
- 10-12-2024
Review Index
| Title | Date | Film Year | Director | Is It Good | Tags |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scarlet Days (1919) | 05/05/2023 | 1919 | Griffith, D.W. | 2 | D.W. Griffith |
| Orphans of the Storm (1921) | 04/29/2021 | 1921 | Griffith, D.W. | 5 | D.W. Griffith, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die |
| Way Down East (1920) | 04/19/2021 | 1920 | Griffith, D.W. | 3 | D.W. Griffith, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die |
| Broken Blossoms (1919) | 04/03/2021 | 1919 | Griffith, D.W. | 5 | D.W. Griffith, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die |
| Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916) | 03/02/2021 | 1916 | Griffith, D.W. | 5 | D.W. Griffith, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die |
| The Birth of a Nation (1915) | 01/06/2021 | 1915 | Griffith, D.W. | 2 | D.W. Griffith, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die |
- Review Series: D.W. Griffith
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