7/30/14 Intolerance (1916) Director: D.W. Griffith (David Wark Griffith) ★★★★☆ While Intolerance is a remarkably grandiose achievement in the history of cinema, it is also a dizzyingly long and complex film that runs the risk of rapidly losing its audience. The concept and scope of the film is incredible, yet…
The Birth of a Nation (1915) Film Review
7/26/14 The Birth of a Nation (1915) Director: D.W. Griffith (David Wark Griffith) ★★☆☆☆ I cannot, in good conscience, praise anything about the narrative of The Birth of a Nation. It presents the notorious “lost cause” narrative of the American Confederacy –a central theme of the film concerns a virtuous,…
Classic Film Reviews
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David Wark Griffith
D.W. Griffith was born and raised in La Grange, Kentucky as the as the youngest child of seven, and his father served as a colonel in the Confederate army. After his failure to sell a script to Edwin S. Porter of Edison Studios under the pseudonym of Lawrence Griffith, Porter…
Classic Film Reviews
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George Melies (1861-1938)
Marie-Georges-Jean Melies (1861-1938), or the “cinemagician” was a French magician and performer who tried to purchase a camera from the Lumiere Brothers (August and Louis who invented the Cinematographe which opened film to larger audiences contra Edison’s Kinetoscope) but was denied. He was 34 years old, and one of 33…