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Transition through Tension: Stylistic Diversity in the Late Griffith Biographs

1989; University of Texas Press; Volume: 28; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1224859

1527-2087

Charlie Keil,

Art History and Market Analysis

Writing about D. W. Griffith in 1974, Kemp Niver observed, From March 1912, when A Beast at Bay was made, until October of 1913 when Griffith left Biograph, most of his films were more or less like the ones he had been producing for the past three years.' One finds a similar position adopted ten years later by Richard Schickel, who dismisses the one-reel films of 1913 in the following cursory manner: There were no experiments with new kinds of story material, nor were there any striking technical advances, or, for that matter, performances.2 While rarely expressed in terms as bald as that found in the preceding two passages, the tendency to dismiss the later Biographs remains a problem for Griffith scholarship. Studies of single films tend to concentrate on the 'seminal' Biographs, usually culled from the earlier years of verifiable technical achievements. Hence, while films like A Corner in Wheat (1909), The Lonely Villa (1909) and The Lonedale Operator (early 1911) continue to receive extensive attention,3 and while various works from 1908 through 1910 warrant detailed description in recent history textbooks,4 the Biographs of the later years remain largely ignored, as if the director were merely marking time between early successes and the advent of the more famous features.5