dropped - d.w.griffith

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

what exactly does it mean to be dropped from an award?

does it mean your no longer famous or the list is getting so damn full that they chose to take orson off?

bye now!

[Harvey Chartrand]

Are you referring to the Director's Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement, which used to be called the D.W. Griffith Award?
Griffith's name was dropped because he was deemed to be a racist scumbag for making the Ku Klux Klan the heroes of 'The Birth of a Nation' (1915) and using all those guys in blackface as villains threatening Lilian Gish and Mary Pickford-types.
Poor Griffith. Yet another indignity. By the time Griffith died in 1948, he was an old saucehound living in a crummy hotel in downtown L.A. Hadn't worked in 17 years, except for an uncredited stint on 'One Million B.C.' (1940), from which he was fired, if memory serves.
Welles met Griffith once in 1940 and the two men didn't get along, because Welles was on the way up and Griffith on the way down. Years later, a similar tension must have existed between Welles and Peter Bogdanovich.

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

well, orson was dropped from the d.w. griffith awards.

i read somewhere.

[jaime marzol]

................
harvey, AMERICAN MASTER has a tremendous 3 hr documentary on griffith. they gave excellent coverage from childhood till death. excellent documentary. they also have the best chaplin documentary i've ever seen.

yeap, welles and griffith, the greatest innovator of films, down and out, and welles, 24 years old, with a carte blanche contract. griffith probably felt like punching him in the face.

nat:
i don't know.

[Welles Fan]

Harvey: I'd cut Dee-Dub a little slack on the racist scumbag issue. He apparently wasn't aware of what a piece of racist crap Birth of a Nation really was. I believe he was southern himself, and probably was brought up on tales of the Ku Klux Klan as some sort of heroes. He based the film on a piece of Klan propoganda called The Clansman. My guess is that he bought into the propoganda and didn't realize how far he swerved from reality. He made his next film-Intolerance largely as a penance for for having made Birth of a Nation, by showing the evils of intolerance through the ages. The monumental failure of Intolerance was probably payment enough for Birth of a Nation.

I agree with Jaime that the American masters series on Griffith (and Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd for that matter) was extremely well done. It showed the best of the best of Griffith, and dealt with the firestorm of controversy Birth caused. The series got me interested in Griffith, and I decided to take a look at Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, and Broken Blossoms. I quite liked Broken Blossoms, and find it effective even today. However, I thought the other two were dreadful. Now, I've seen my share of silent films, both comedy and drama, but these Griffith epics were among the dullest things I've ever seen. Birth of a Nation is not even unintentionally funny enough to recommend it. The Civil War battles are well done, and look like newsreel footage, and the Klan ride to the rescue (of poor Lillian) is kind of exciting, but the rest of the endless movie was like a series of still photographs.

I think he was indeed dropped from the award because he ceased to be a yardstick by which great directors were measured.

[Harvey Chartrand]

Broken Blossoms is great. It's a small, focused picture, with wonderful performances from Richard Barthelmess (as an Oriental), Lillian Gish and Donald Crisp. The studio recreation of East London is enchanting.
Orphans of the Storm (Griffith's epic of the French Revolution shot in upstate New York) has some good scenes.
As do Isn't Life Wonderful (filmed on location in Weimar Germany) and The Sorrows of Satan, a supernatural tale starring Ricardo Cortez (Stanley's brother).
But unfortunately, as important as Griffith was to the history of cinema, most of his work is unwatchable, unlike his contemporary Abel Gance, whose earlier films (such as La Roue, J'Accuse! and Au Secours!) hold up remarkably well.

Griffith's name was taken off the Directors Guild Award because of the racist tag, not because his work doesn't travel well or because he was an overrated hack.
I can't see that Welles would be stripped of the Directors Guild honor accorded him 20 years ago.

Griffith's downfall is well chronicled in Richard Schickel's monumental biography. D.W.'s luck ran out and, although a teetotaler for many years, he became a drunkard in late middle age. Griffith filmed The Struggle, about the horrors of alcoholism, in 1931, partly for therapeutic reasons. The Struggle proved to be a futile attempt at maintaining sobriety, and such a critical and commercial disaster that Griffith never made another picture, though he still had 17 years to go before the end. In 1948, D.W. died of a heart attack in the lobby of the rundown hotel in downtown L.A. where he spent his final dissolute years.

[jaime marzol]

....................

ok, i thought i was the only one who was not able to sit through BIRTH OF A NATION, and INTOLLARANCE. i've seen both films all the way through severaal times, but never in one sitting. BROKEN BLOSSONS is another story. i think it's the most enjoyable griffith i've seen. my laser disc of it is missing the opium den footage.

intresting the picture that AMERICAN MASTERS painted of the BIRTH OF A NATION controversy. it was not giffith's racist views, it was the view of the country at the time. all involved were totally surprised by the controversy.

the documentary also points out that griffith was a showman, he didn't stand on one side, he made his stance where ever it would suit his film best.

i have AMERICAN MASTERS CHAPLIN, GRIFFITH, KEATON, SCORSESE, have seen LLOYD. are there more? thames HOLLYWOOD series is also very well put together, a pleasure to watch.

[Welles Fan]

A few years ago, I read Kevin Brownlow's valentine to silent Hollywood-The Parade's Gone By. He interviews a guy in it (Joseph Henabery) who "played" Lincoln in Birth of a Nation. Henaberry later was an assistant director on Intolerance. I remember finding it odd that movies that seemed to be just thrown together, with little in the way of a script, could be so "great". After later seeing these "great" Griffith films, it was apparent how thrown together they were. I also remember seeing his dreary film of Abraham Lincoln with Walter Huston years ago, and wondering why such a fuss was made over him.

He may have been dropped from the award because of his views, but I think his career died because he did not (apparently) grow in his craft (and would his views have been tolerated if he were a money machine for the industry? I wonder). Look at Chaplin's films from the time of Birth of a Nation and compare his films from the 20's. Griffith never seemed to me (but for Broken Blossoms) to have broken from his 1916-ish style of film-making.

At least Intolerance was the "inspiration" for Keaton's first foray into feature films (The Three Ages). Also, didn't Intolerance do fairly well on the recent S & S poll?

[jaime marzol]

..............

i think INTOLERANCE, and BIRTH OF A NATION are quite good films. didn't mean to give the impression that i didn't like them, i do. i would love to see the dreary ABRAHAM LINCOLN. have seen some clips that looked great.

griffith was burried by the jazz age, and a new morality that his fiilms did not reflect, or speak for. same thing that happened to ford. one day he woke up and he was out of fashion.

i don't agree with, but i can see why his name was dropped from the award. what black filmmaker would want the d. w. griffith award?

i never viewed the making of BIRTH OF A NATION as a racist act. society just didn't know any better. BIRTH OF A NAATION or griffith should no be condemed any more than all the films that used eye rolling, tap dancing, darkies as comedy releif. they were all guilty.

[Welles Fan]

I find Birth of a Nation to simply be boring. One thing I like about the great silent films, is how they move quickly (and not merely because they are sped up) and tell their stories (for the most part) purely visually. B.O.A.N. is visual enough, but it does not move. It is like looking at a series of tableaux that seldom move or change. There is certainly some great stuff in it, and by showing the good stuff, you can certainly make it look like an exciting film (this is what the documentary on PBS did), and indeed, some parts are exciting. But taken as a whole there is too much dialogue, too many descriptive cards, and not enough action. I will grant that it is very early for its time, and it attempted a much grander epic than had been attempted up to that time. I think it simply has not aged well.

Abraham Lincoln was the first Griffith film I saw. I think it is dreary and boring because it is such an early talkie, and almost all the earliest talkies suffer from the filmmakers unfamiliarity with the new medium (the exception, IMO being Von Sternberg-his early talkies are great). Basically, everything is static, and everyone is sitting or standing around listening to how well everybody talks.

I agree his films are no more racist than a lot that was done back then (even the great silent clowns rely on a bit of "darkie" humor on occasion), and I certainly would not judge him with today's eyes.