D. W. Griffith

D. W. Griffith (1875-1948), pioneering American motion-picture director, who established a new standard for motion-picture production. He is often called The Father of the Motion Picture.

David Wark Griffith was born in La Grange, Kentucky, and educated in local schools. After working as an actor in stock and road theater companies, he became an actor for the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in 1908, later serving as a director for the studio in New York City and in California. For Biograph alone he made more than 450 short films. There, too, he assembled his own stock company of film professionals, including many of the era's most notable actors (such as Mary Pickford, the Gish sisters, Mabel Normand, Mae Marsh, and Wallace Reid) and directors (such as Mack Sennett and Erich von Stroheim). He also collaborated extensively with the legendary cameraman Billy Bitzer.

In 1913 Griffith left Biograph for Reliance-Majestic studios and later became an independent producer. His pictures Judith of Bethulia (1914), The Birth of a Nation (1915), and Intolerance (1916) established him as the leading motion-picture producer of the time. The Birth of a Nation is considered among the most important films ever made, for its success established not only the feature-length film but also the Hollywood star system. The motion picture demonstrates the disturbing power of film propaganda: Its racist elements provoked protests, riots, and other violence, and eventually a move toward film censorship laws. Intolerance, a grand-scaled film pursuing four story lines simultaneously, was not successful at the box office but has had a significant influence on the subsequent development of film art.

Until Griffith's time, motion pictures had been short, rarely exceeding one reel; episodic rather than dramatic; and poorly produced, acted, and edited. Griffith's films were frequently several hours in length, contained powerful dramatic situations and vivid characters, and were produced with technical virtuosity. He perfected some of the best-known devices in motion-picture production, such as the close-up, a close view of a character's face or figure or of an object, shown for dramatic emphasis; the fade-out, a transition from one scene to another by the gradual disappearance of the first scene from the screen; the cutback, or flashback, which for purposes of clarification of plot or characterization, introduces scenes antedating those already shown; and, most importantly, the use of parallel editing, the cross-cutting of footage of simultaneous action to achieve suspense.

In 1920, with film actors Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and Charlie Chaplin, Griffith formed the United Artists Corporation for the production of feature pictures. Among the motion pictures he directed for that company were Broken Blossoms (1919), Way Down East (1920), The Orphans of the Storm (1922), America (1924), Battle of the Sexes (1928), and Lady of the Pavements (1929), all of them silent films except for Lady, which included some singing. Griffith made two talking pictures—Abraham Lincoln (1930) and The Struggle (1931)—but they were not as successful as his silent films.

See also Motion Pictures, History of.