Griffith was born in rural Kentucky to Jacob “Roaring Jake” Griffith, a Confederate Army colonel and Civil War hero. He grew up with his father’s romantic war stories and melodramatic nineteenth century literature that were to eventually mold his black-and-white view of human existence and history. In 1897, Griffith set out to pursue a career both acting and writing for the theater but for the most part was unsuccessful. Reluctantly, he agreed to act in the new motion picture medium for Edwin S. Porter at the Edison Company. Griffith was eventually offered a job at the financially struggling American Biograph Company where he directed over 450 short films, experimenting with the story-telling techniques he would later perfect in his epic The Birth of a Nation (1915). Griffith and his personal cinematographer G.W. Bitzer collaborated to create and perfect such cinematic devices as the flashback, the iris shot, the mask, and crosscutting. In the years following Birth, Griffith never again saw the same monumental success, and, in 1931, his increasing failures forced his retirement. Though hailed for his vision in narrative film-making, he was similarly criticized for his blatant racism. Griffith died in Los Angeles in 1948, one of the most dichotomous figures in film history. 597

IMDb mini-biography by Michael Kaminsky <kaminsky@ucsee.eecs.berkeley.edu>

He has been called “the father of film technique,” “the man who invented Hollywood,” and “the Shakespeare of the screen.”

In 1920, he established United Artists with Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and William S. Hart.

Interred at Mount Tabor Methodist Church Graveyard, Crestwood, Kentucky, USA.

In 1975, the U.S. Postal Service honored Griffith with a postage stamp.

15 December 1999: Declaring that Griffith "”helped foster intolerable racial stereotypes,” The Directors Guild of America’s National Board - without membership consultation - announced it would rename the D.W. Griffith Award, the Guild’s highest honor. First given in 1953, its recipients included Stanley Kubrick, David Lean, John Huston, Woody Allen, Akira Kurosawa, John Ford, Ingmar Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock and Griffith’s friend Cecil B. de Mille

Personal quotes

“A film without a message is just a waste of time, " quoted by Billy Bitzer in "Billy Bitzer: His Story.”

“Move these ten-thousand horses a trifle to the right, and that mob out there three feet forward.” Instructions Griffith allegedly gave to his assistants during the making of one of his epics, quoted by Von Sternberg, Josef in his memoir “Fun in a Chinese Laundry.”

“There will never be talking pictures.”

“Talkies, squeakies, moanies, songies, squawkies... Just give them ten years to develop and you're going to see the greatest artistic medium the world has known.”

“Actors should never be important. Only directors should have power and place.”

“Everything went downhill after Lillian [Gish] left me.”

Said that silent films were associated with “the good old American faculty of wanting to be shown things.”

“I made them see, didn’t I? I changed everything.”

“Remember how small the world was before I came along. I brought it all to life: I moved the whole world onto a 20-foot screen.” 597