Dw Griffith Quotes

I foresee no possibility of venturing into themes showing a closer view of reality for a long time to come. The public itself will not have it. What it wants is a gun and a girl.

In the year 2024 the most important single thing which the cinema will have helped in a large way to accomplish will be that of eliminating from the face of the civilised world all armed conflict. Pictures will be the most powerful factor in bringing about this condition. With the use of the universal language of moving pictures the true meaning of the brotherhood of man will have been established throughout the earth.

(On D.W Griffith's The Birth of a Nation) This was the one time in movie history that a man of great ability worked freely, in an unspoiled medium, for an unspoiled audience, on a majestic theme which involved all that he was; and brought to it, besides his abilities as an inventor and artist, absolute passion, pity, courage, and honesty. “The Birth of a Nation” is equal with Brady’s photographs, Lincoln’s speeches, Whitman’s war poems; for all its imperfections and absurdities it is equal, in fact, to the best work that has been done in this country. And among moving pictures it is alone, not necessarily as “the greatest” — whatever that means — but as the one great epic, tragic film.

(On D.W Griffith's the birth of a nation - 1915) He achieved what no other known man has ever achieved. To watch his work is like being witness to the beginning of melody, or the first conscious use of the lever or the wheel; the emergence, coordination, and first eloquence of language; the birth of an art: and to realize that this is all the work of one man. We will never realize how good he really was until we have the chance to see his work as often as it deserves to be seen, to examine and enjoy it in detail as exact as his achievement.

(On D.W Griffith's The Birth of a Nation) he was a great primitive poet, a man capable, as only great and primitive artists can be, of intuitively perceiving and perfecting the tremendous magical images that underlie the memory and imagination of entire peoples. If he had achieved this only once, and only for me, I could not feel that he was what I believe he is; but he created many such images, and I suspect that many people besides me have recognized them, on that deepest level that art can draw on, reach, and serve.

A once-great filmmaker has taken on a new avatar less heroic than Parzival. It is the avatar of a pandering crowd-pleaser. Spielberg, the D. W. Griffith of the sound era—who ironically, when the politically correct putsch began in 1999, turned his back on Griffith by failing to speak up as the Directors Guild of America stripped Griffith’s name and legacy from its awards—now celebrates Hollywood’s most craven tendencies. The crowd-pleaser has outdone himself.

The willingness of black Bostonians to organize, lobby, attend mass meetings (at least eighteen of these were held), and sign petitions suggests that the Birth of a Nation controversy had a major impact locally in terms of the promotion of racial solidarity.

On a more minor factual note, the burning of crosses was not a part of the ritual of the Reconstruction-era Klan. It was imagined by Thomas Dixon Jr., who in turn may have plagiarized it from the work of Sir Walter Scott, especially The Lady of the Lake

Goldstein remains the only film director ever to have been sent to jail for producing a spectacular and patriotic epic on the subject of the American Revolution.