|
By PAUL BRENNER
Film is like a battleground. Love. Hate. Violence. In one word, emotion. When
Samuel Fuller defines cinema to Jean-Paul Belmondo in Godard's "Pierrot Le Fou" with these often quoted words, Fuller
could just as well have been speaking of the films of silent screen master D. W. Griffith, whose films are never less
than emotional wallops. Now Kino Video has released a seminal seven-disc box set of "Griffith Masterworks," consisting
of the greatest films (minus "Way Down East" and, arguably, "America") of the film innovator and pioneer -- the two-disc
"Biograph Shorts 1909-1913: Special Edition," another two-disc "The Birth of a Nation and The Civil War Films of D.W.
Griffith," "Intolerance," "Broken Blossoms," and "Orphans of the Storm." All the films are digitally remastered from
archival elements and all feature extensive supplementary materials.
It is needless to explain the importance of Griffith in the development of cinema as the major art form of the 20th
Century. Suffice to say, encompassed in the Kino box set is film past, present, and future. The discs also chart the
course of a maverick and compulsively prolific filmmaker who began his career as an artist of social awareness intent on
exposing contemporary injustices and economic disparities and then ended his career as an old-fashioned relic of 19th
Century tastes, wallowing in over-blown fantasy spectacles with little taste for current problems and criticisms.
The first two-disc collection, "Biograph Shorts 1909-1913: Special Edition," shows Griffith as trailblazer, dragging
film form kicking and screaming from freak-show exploitation to middle-class respectability. The shorts reveal Griffith
in a range of guises -as tub-thumping entertainer ("The New York Hat," "The Sunbeam," "Battle of Elderbush Gulch"), as
moody artist ("The Unchanging Sea," "The Mothering Heart"), and as acerbic social critic ("Corner in Wheat," "Musketeers
of Pig Alley," "One Is Business, The Other Is Crime"). His massive burst of creativity and innovation during 1909-1913
came as he chaffed at the limitations imposed upon him by the Biograph Company's businessmen, who didn't want art but a
quick buck. In this varied collection of shorts, Kino demonstrates why Griffith was such an unstoppable force in the
motion picture world, with fifteen shorts and an additional eight presented as bonus features.
After breaking free of the Biograph yoke in 1914, Griffith became unfettered and gleefully promoted himself as THE
innovator of cinema. True or not, Griffith's publicity machine said he was and this helped him in raising the funding to
work on his epochal triumph, "The Birth of a Nation." Logging in at 187 minutes in the two-disc Kino edition, "The Birth
of a Nation and the Civil War Films of D.W. Griffith," "The Birth" (as Griffith liked to term his film) was a handy
compendium of technological and narrative advances all in the service of a grand historical epic, with Griffith shifting
effortlessly between great historical movements and personal stories of a northern and southern family interacting with
each other during the Civil War. Griffith, an unrepentant son of the Confederate south, readily latched upon Thomas
Dixon's rabid "The Clansman" to produce a one-of-a-kind blockbuster, timed to coincide with the 50th Anniversary of the
end of the Civil War.
Now, let's get this straight. There is no denying the artistry and passion that infuses every frame of "The Birth of a
Nation." So, to paraphrase Anthony Perkins in "Psycho," it is not Griffith I hate, I hate the madness. Much in the same
way scientific advances were utilized to create the nuclear bomb, Griffith's artistic advances in cinema were utilized
in "The Birth of a Nation" to create a blind and virulent racism. One thing's for sure, there is no denying Griffith's
warped artistic integrity as he follows the trail of "The Birth of a Nation" to the end of the line of crackbrained
extremism.
It takes a master artist and manipulator to muster the newly available power of film into areas that are truly
terrifying and ugly. Griffith lulls the audience in the first half of the film into a warm and pliable identification
with the southern heroes and creates a dream world of southern charm and lazy comforts. Then, possessed by the devil, he
twists audience emotions to justify the two white factions of north and south uniting "in defense of their Aryan
birthright." Griffith transforms into a dangerous rabble-rouser, blithely glorifying the creation of the Ku Klux Klan
and casting blacks as uber beings somewhat less than human. As if this weren't enough, amidst all the pop-eyed racism,
Griffith flogs a malevolently nasty subtext upholding racial purity amid the raging and uncontrollable sexual desires of
blacks (or, more accurately, white men in blackface) as a "fate worse than death" for ethereal white virgins.
Griffith's passionate embrace of Neanderthal racist attitudes galvanized not only the Ku Klux Klan (increasing their
membership drastically due to the popularity of the film) but also a recharged N.A.A.C.P. In "The Birth of a Nation" the
inherent dangers of film art can be unflinchingly seen.
The bonus features on the disc are enough to provide ample groundwork for budding film historians everywhere. A "Making
Of . . ." documentary rounds out the first disc. Disc two contains posters, ads, souvenir programs, excerpts from
Dixon's original novel, an article from Photoplay with Griffith discussing the film, and sheaves of documents from "New
York vs. The Birth of a Nation." There is also a bizarre introduction to a 1930 re-release of "The Birth" featuring
Walter Huston and D.W. Griffith sitting in a study, smoking cigars, as Griffith claims that after the Civil War the Ku
Klux Klan served a purpose, and climaxing as Huston accepts twenty cents from Griffith and awards him the sword of a
dead Confederate soldier. The bulk of the second disc contains seven Civil War shorts made by Griffith at Biograph, five
of which are more evenhanded depictions of the conflict, while the remaining two feature the joys of being a darkie in
service to the blighted family of a southern massa.
Griffith, smarting from the personal attacks that greeted him with the phenomenal success of "The Birth of a Nation,"
funneled all of his profits into an even more spectacular 197-minute super-production, "Intolerance." His feverish
production interweaves four stories throughout history, demonstrating that "hatred and intolerance, through the ages,
have battled against love and charity." Griffith, attempting to set the record straight, throws everything into the mix
in "Intolerance" as if he were going to die tomorrow. Labor strikes, massacres, jaw-dropping sets and casts of
thousands, the Fall of Babylon, even Jesus Christ, are all enlisted in a crosscutting mania all in service to his
central theme. Griffith's revolutionary technique -- staggering even today -- is however, at the mercy of old-fashioned
19th century theaterical chestnuts. The audiences of 1916 had no way to respond to the film -- at the same moment that
the film was too experimental it was also too passé. The film flopped big time and Griffith never recovered financially.
But, as Orson Welles comments in his introduction to the film, "that failure remains one of the greatest successes in
cinema." The film is breathless and never short of fascinating. Along with Welles introduction, the bonus features on
the disc include excerpts from the Italian epics that influenced Griffith in the conception of the film ("The Last Days
of Pompeii" and "Cabiria"), a revised happy ending to the Babylon story, a short essay about the music score, an peek at
what is actually written on the pages of the book in "Intolerance" that is leafed through at periodic intervals in the
film, and two self-defending screeds written by Griffith -- "Away With Meddlers: A Declaration of Independence" and "The
Rise and Fall of Free Speech in America." Griffith had apparently gone off the deep end.
With the next film in the collection, "Broken Blossoms," Griffith makes an attempt to return to small-scale production.
His "tale of tears" is an artfully realized mood piece, based on Thomas Burke's "The Chink and the Child." This delicate
tale of a chaste love affair between a fifteen-year-old street urchin (movingly played by Lillian Gish) and a Chinese
storekeeper is pure gossamer. The whole tone is wispy, almost hovering over the celluloid, with Griffith expertly
maintaining a delicate balance. The film is marred only by the cartoon ape performance of Donald Crisp and the film's
confectionary reality. The special features include an introduction to the film by Lillian Gish, the complete text of
Burke's short story, notes on the score, excerpts from Griffith interviews from Photoplay, and an amazing bit of sheet
music promotion for the film -the "Broken Blossoms" song.
"Orphans of the Storm" is the final film in the collection and Griffith's last big success (although despite the film's
popularity it still managed to lose money). Starring Lillian and Dorothy Gish, "Orphans of the Storm" returns Griffith
to a large-scale historical epic, in this case the French Revolution. Lillian and Dorothy Gish play two sisters
separated in Paris as the city descends into anarchy. Griffith has never been more adept at fusing elaborately staged
pageants with the emotions of love and personal loss. "Orphans of the Storm" is Griffith's most accessible film and he
comes through with masterly and impressive staging along with a breathtaking climax. A swan song for Lillian Gish,
"Orphans of the Storm" was the last film she made for Griffith. It was also a swan song for Griffith who, within a few
years, would find himself laboring powerless within the Hollywood studio system, churning out potboilers like "The
Sorrows of Satan" and "The Lady of the Pavements" before descending into alcoholism and a cold room at the Knickerbocker
Hotel in Hollywood, forgotten and ignored.
The bonus features include another introduction by Orson Welles, a collection of Griffith photographs, "Rescued From The
Eagle's Nest" from 1908 (a film featuring Griffith as an actor), a biography of Griffith from Photoplay, and footage
from Griffith's funeral in 1948. Climaxing the disc and the collection is a bitter eulogy delivered by Erich von
Stroheim for radio broadcast. Stroheim acidly recites Griffith's accomplishments (but could just as well be talking
about himself) as he harshly points out that Griffith died "in the heart of the most heartless town in the world." |
