D. W. Griffith - Film Career

Film Career

In 1907, Griffith, still writing as a playwright, went to New York and attempted to sell a script to Edison Studios producer Edwin Porter. Porter rejected Griffith's script, but gave him an acting part in Rescued from an Eagle's Nest. Finding this attractive, Griffith explored the motion picture business. In 1908, Griffith accepted an acting job for the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, commonly known as Biograph, in New York City. At Biograph, Griffith's career in the film industry would change forever. In 1908, Biograph's main director Wallace McCutcheon grew ill, and his son, Wallace McCutcheon, Jr., took his place. McCutcheon, Jr., however, was not able to bring the studio success. As a result, the Biograph head Henry Marvin decided to give Griffith the position; and the young man made his first movie for the company, The Adventures of Dollie.

Biograph's In Old California (1910) was the first film shot in Hollywood, California. Influenced by the Italian feature film Cabiria (1914), Griffith was convinced that feature films were commercially viable. He produced and directed the Biograph film Judith of Bethulia (1914), one of the earliest feature films to be produced in the United States. At the time, Biograph believed that longer features were not viable. According to actress Lillian Gish, " thought that a movie that long would hurt eyes".

Because of company resistance to his goals, and his cost overruns on the film (it cost US$30,000 dollars to produce), Griffith left Biograph. He took his stock company of actors with him and joined the Mutual Film Corporation. He formed a studio with the Majestic Studio manager Harry Aitken; it became known as Reliance-Majestic Studios (and was later renamed Fine Arts Studio). His new production company became an autonomous production unit partner in Triangle Film Corporation along with Thomas Ince and Keystone Studios' Mack Sennett; the Triangle Film Corporation was headed by Griffith's partner Harry Aitken, who was released from the Mutual Film Corporation, and his brother Roy.

Through Reliance-Majestic Studios, Griffith produced The Clansman (1915), which would later be known as The Birth of a Nation. Historically, The Birth of a Nation was the first blockbuster. It is considered important by film historians as one of the first feature length American films (most previous films had been less than one hour long), and it changed the industry's standard in a way still influential today. It was enormously popular, breaking box office records, but aroused controversy due to its depiction of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, and race relations in the Civil War and the Reconstruction era. Like its source material, Thomas Dixon, Jr.'s 1905 novel The Clansman, it depicts Southern pre-Civil War slavery as benign, the enfranchisement of freedmen as a corrupt Republican plot, and the Ku Klux Klan as a band of heroes restoring the rightful order. This view of the era was popular at the time, and was endorsed by historians of the Dunning School for decades, although it met with strong criticism from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and other groups. The NAACP attempted to stop showings of the film; while they were successful in some cities, it was shown widely and became the most successful box office attraction of its time. "They lost track of the money it made", Lillian Gish once remarked in a Kevin Brownlow interview.

Among the people who profited by the film was Louis B. Mayer, who bought the rights to distribute The Birth of a Nation in New England. With the money he made, he was able to begin his career as a producer that culminated in the creation of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios.

After seeing the film, which was filled with action and violence, audiences in some major northern cities rioted over the film's racial content.

In his next film, Intolerance, Griffith believed he was responding to critics. He portrayed the effects of intolerance in four different historical periods: the Fall of Babylon; the Crucifixion of Jesus; the events surrounding the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre (during religious persecution of French Huguenots); and a modern story. During its release Intolerance was not a financial success; although it had good box office turn-outs, the film did not bring in enough profits to cover the lavish road show that accompanied it. Griffith put a huge budget into the film's production, which could not be recovered in its box office.

When his production partnership was dissolved in 1917, Griffith went to Artcraft (part of Paramount), then to First National (1919–1920). At the same time he founded United Artists, together with Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks. At United Artists, Griffith continued to make films, but never could achieve box office grosses as high as either The Birth of a Nation or Intolerance.

Griffith was also a producer on the 1915 movie Martyrs of the Alamo.