D. W. Griffith Critical Essay | Critical Essay by William Cadbury

Critical Essay by William Cadbury

SOURCE: "Theme, Felt Life, and the Last-Minute Rescue in Griffith After Intolerance," in Film Quarterly, Vol. XXVIII, No. 1, Fall, 1974, pp. 39-49.

In the following essay, Cadbury asserts that a mature artistic vision is present in Griffith's earlier films.

There have come to be two positions on D. W. Griffith, a modern orthodoxy and a much-needed revisionism. The orthodoxy is a picture of Griffith the great innovator, whose values and intentions however amount only to a style for his times. When those times changed (it happened with startling suddenness, Karl Brown reminisces, between the making and exhibiting of Intolerance), Griffith's values and his style fell away from those congenial to his audience. In this view the later films are spasmodic attempts to accommodate the new audience without, however, any aesthetic growth on Griffith's part. Griffith is aesthetically the same throughout his career, and the films only come to look...
(read more)