TV Guide: D.W. Griffith

Listing: One Million B.C.

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 06:45:00 -0500

Tue Dec 15 06:45 AM TCM

Video: Broken Blossoms

Amazon Video on Demand — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 09:50:10 -0500

Lucy (Gish), a battered child, lives in the gloom of London's Limehouse district with her father, Battling Burrows (Crisp), an alcoholic prize fighter. She meets Cheng Huan (Barthelmess), a Chinese poet and idealist, and briefly escapes the world of degradation she has known at the hands of her abusive father. This remarkable film, directed by D. W. Griffith, features one of Gish's most memorable--and touching--performances.

Video: Broken Blossoms

Amazon Video on Demand — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 09:50:10 -0500

Video: Sennett on His Humble Beginnings

History — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:28:23 -0500

Canadian-born director Mack Sennett, the creator of the Keystone Kops, is regarded as the father of American slapstick comedy. Originally a performer in vaudeville and theater, he studied silent-film direction under the tutelage of D. W. Griffith.

Video: This Day In History: The Birth of a Nation Opens (2/8/1915)

Biography — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 08:10:46 -0500

On this day in history, February 8th, America's first feature-length motion picture, D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, premieres at Clune's Auditorium in Los Angeles.

Video: Leaves From Satan's Book

Amazon Video on Demand — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:35:00 -0500

After seeing D. W. Griffith's epic Intolerance, Denmark's greatest director, Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion of Joan of Arc, Vampyr), was inspired to make his own four-episode historical epic with each story told end to end, anthology-style, linked by theme to the others. The unifying character, Satan, attempts to win God's favor but is doomed to cheerless participation in dark episodes of human history: the temptation of Jesus, the Spanish Inquisition, the French Revolution and the Russo-Finnish war of 1918. Few directors resisted compromise and convention the way Dreyer did; fortunately, the Nordisk Film Company was artistically progressive by Hollywood standards and agreed that this should be a prestige film made to the highest standards. More than two years in production, Dreyer not only directed but also controlled every facet of this ambitious production.

Video: Leaves From Satan's Book

Amazon Video on Demand — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:34:32 -0500

Video: Crainquebille

Amazon Video on Demand — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 00:25:26 -0500

Crainquebille is the name of a fruit and vegetable peddler (Maurice de Feraudy) who, accused of having insulted a policeman, becomes trapped in the bureaucratic web of French justice. He is sent to jail; after release, his bourgeois customers shun him, but at the point of suicide he is redeemed by an orphan newsboy (Jean Forest, an amazingly sensitive and expressive child found by Feyder on the streets of Montmartre). Feyder filmed on location around the market area of Les Halles and in some of the oldest areas of Paris. D. W. Griffith allegedly said of Crainquebille, "I have seen a film which, for me, precisely symbolizes Paris."

Video: Before Hollywood There Was Fort Lee, NJ

Amazon Video on Demand — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 23:58:16 -0500

When Hollywood was mostly orange groves, Fort Lee, New Jersey was a center of American film production: D. W. Griffith made many one-reel Biograph dramas, Mack Sennett appeared in his first film, Pearl White endured the Perils of Pauline, and Mary Pickford and Theda Bara starred in early features. By the mid-teens, a dozen major movie studios were operating across the Hudson River from Manhattan's Washington Heights. Using rare photographs, almost-complete versions of such films as Edison's "Rescued from an Eagle's Nest" and Biograph's "The Curtain Pole," and poignant footage from 1935 of the great glass studios in ruins, this comprehensive collection also features D. W. Griffith's "The New York Hat," featuring Mary Pickford and Lionel Barrymore. Maurice Tourneur is represented by the once-lost 1917 feature "A Girl's Folly," in a half-hour abridgement with views of the glass stages, rotating sets, tank for water effects, projection room, and crews at work, and his enchanting hour-long

Video: Crainquebille

Amazon Video on Demand — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 22:43:28 -0500

Video: True Heart Susie (silent)

Amazon Video on Demand — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:13:40 -0500

In 1918-1919, D. W. Griffith turned from spectacles such as The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance and Hearts of the World to smaller films, which he called his "short story series." Among these is True Heart Susie. "There are those of us who consider True Heart Susie to be Griffith's masterpiece," writes Tom Gunning in his notes for a 2006 screening at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival. He goes on to praise the "narrative structure and point of view, as well as the fine details of performance, framing, and even the use of intertitles that makes a seemingly modest film such as this appear nearly incandescent in its confessional and emotional power." In an almost mythical American arcadia, Lillian Gish portrays a pure, prim girl who so loves her childhood sweetheart (Griffith's most charming boyish hero, Robert Harron) that she sells the family cow to anonymously finance his higher education, only to lose him to a more "modern" woman (Clarine Seymour) when he comes home. Gish's performance

Video: True Heart Susie (silent)

Amazon Video on Demand — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:11:48 -0500

Video: Before Hollywood There Was Fort Lee, NJ

Amazon Video on Demand — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 19:54:26 -0500

Video: True Heart Susie (Silent Film)

CinemaNow — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 13:45:07 -0500