Influence – D.W. Griffith and the no longer relevant

IG Agent 19 has been writing lately about how to Rank music, taking as his inspiration an article from

Links to the various articles can be found at the end of this one, they’re interesting, especially as it rethinks our normal sequential assignment of rank in relation to artistic quality — that is to say 19 observes that many artists are at the same level of quality and ranks them together instead of following the top down hierarchical method our culture requires of lists in order that everyone can argue about their favorite artist’s ranking forever.

In these articles he also had some things to say in regards to the concept of influence, the subject of which was already on my mind after having read the following on D.W. Griffith

Before diving in I will make some relevant quotations from the articles of Agent 19:

There will always be a first, because that is just how time works. But of course if you have been preceded by someone and you are naturally inclined to do something similar to what those before you have done, you will probably become familiar with their work and as such you will be influenced by them, it is not that without Bob Dylan there would not have been Elvis Costello, it is that you cannot be Elvis Costello without thinking about Bob Dylan and absorbing what he has done assuming a world in which Bob Dylan exists — but you can be Elvis Costello in a world without Dylan, even if we can’t say for sure what that world would look like. Would Elvis Costello be significantly different without Bob Dylan’s existence? I actually don’t think so…

AND

People always talk about influences that came before — but just as the contemporaries of a teenager are likely to be a bigger influence than their parents the contemporaries of an artist will probably push them farther than those initial influences ever could. It is hard not to see the influences of these three bands on The Beatles and to a smaller extent The Rolling Stones, but also of course on everyone that came after.

And From

With that in mind let’s put influences in 3 categories —

essential (without this you might not even have had the people they influenced, or things would have been noticeably different even with a cursory investigation).

strong (not essential for the people that were influenced, but maybe some important works would not have existed or existed in quite a different form — the creators would have seemed pretty much the same, but some creations would have disappeared).

replaceable — these are the nice to have influences, they probably don’t influence at the level of a song or an album or anything noticeable to anyone paying attention, but maybe a guitar riff might have sounded different or it would have ended up sounding the same, just gotten at through a different route. But because they exist they were the ones who took over that influence, and despite their replaceability they deserve some credit.

The points we will look at in this section are:

How many of the innovations of Griffith are actually ones that he did first? The article https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2006/great-directors/griffith/ makes the point that:

Griffith’s “innovations” were, in most cases, somewhat more effective uses of techniques already developed by others. He never graduated from primitive, full frontal framing in interior scenes and never employed a point-of-view shot in any of his films.

By the way if you are interested in a great aesthetic evaluation of Griffith that also aligns it with his racist views read that senses of cinema article.

How many of the innovations of Griffith are ones that someone would have made if he did not happen to make them first? That someone did it first is not that interesting if someone else would have done the same thing, perhaps even a short while afterwards. The first customer at a store probably isn’t that noteworthy, even if the dollar they spent goes up in a frame on the wall.

How essential of an influence was Griffith on those that came after him?

How essential of an influence was Griffith on those that were his contemporaries? If for example his contemporaries were heavily influenced by Griffith and it was those contemporaries that were the more influential on later generations we can understand something about the primacy of Griffith’s influence.

Finally, how impressive was the work that Griffith did using these innovations — perhaps he was the originator of a technique but he did not actually do anything interesting with the technique he invented. How do we know if something interesting was done with a technique?

Well, to answer that I would refer to an article from 2020 Photography This epic tracking shot from a century-old silent film was way ahead of its time about this tracking shot from the 1927 movie Wings (Director: William Wellman), which has been making the rounds recently

This is a decade after Birth of a Nation — now personally when I see this scene I think “showoff”. If someone has produced a scene that 20 years later you think “showoff” then you can reasonably say something interesting was done (and this was, as I noted, 100 years)

Obviously there are other things that might make one thing something was interesting but I do not have the time for an exhaustive listing of examples, just that this one sprang to mind when considering Griffiths.

First let’s consider the things that Griffiths is credited with creating, from the already linked article:

Close-ups, Long-shots, Medium-shots, Establishing Shots, Tracking Shots, Crane Shot, Cross-cutting (switching between two scenes to tell story simultaneously), Matte, Dissolve, Flashbacks, Color tinting, Classical Narration.

The article also credits him with popularizing Intertitles (those title cards you would see in between the action in silent films)

Intertitle

Of these inventions I think we can only claim Griffith popularized the following techniques:

Close-ups, Long-shots, Medium-shots, Establishing Shots, Tracking Shots, Cross-cutting, Matte, Dissolve, Flashbacks, Color tinting.

Griffith as popularizer, not innovator

People put a lot of emphasis on popularization of a technique, which definitely can be important for influencing a coming generation — but for influencing ones contemporaries probably not so important. A contemporary probably consumes the same media you do — and as such they see the same techniques you do and think to use these techniques if given the chance, influenced by the primary source.

Griffith’s popularization was more to make the techniques popular with the public and thus a requirement for a film to have, if a technique is popular with the public you will probably deploy it yourself in hopes of profit or popular acceptance of your work. As such that Griffith was popular led to imitation in desire of public acclaim, not necessarily because of aesthetic appreciation of his innovation.

Griffith, color and lighting

Various color effects where present before Griffith and he cannot be said in any way to have invented color tinting, however he was praised for his achievement of unique effects via color tinting, he is supposed to have had a method for flashing lights on the screen to achieve color effects, and evidently held a patent for this https://patents.google.com/patent/CA203878A/en?assignee=%22Griffith+David+Wark%22&oq=+%22Griffith+David+Wark%22

I have unfortunately not been able to find any great description of the visual sensations this apparatus produced, although I would have to expect that flashing a light on the screen would result in the film losing some contrast in the process.

So Griffith was certainly not the first to color tint, and the colorization effect he did invent did not seem to influence anyone else. I personally don’t find the color tinting he did that appealing, although some of the blue tinting in Intolerance is nice

Griffith also held another patent

Which, as he took the time to patent it, must have been used by him — here is his description of the purpose and usage

1. Means for taking moving pictures with peculiar shadow efiects which consist of a camera, means for supporting an actor, a screen with an image thereon which is invisible unless oblique lights are thrown on the screen and two sets of lights, one adapted to be thrown on an actor so that he mav perform while the camera functions through the screen and another set of lights adapted to be thrown obliquely on the screen so as to bring out an image thereon so that the camera will photograph the image superimposed on the actor.

2. The process of making moving pictures which consists in positioning a screen having an image thereon which is invisible unless oblique lights be thrown on the screen, illuminating an actor by a series of lights, illuminating with oblique rays the screen b an independent light source, positioning tii e camera before the screen and substantially in alignment with the actor and exposing a previously unexposed sensitive hn within the camera and before the illuminated screen.

(quote poor quality due to graphics to text extraction, obviously)

It would be interesting to know if he used the method and in what shots it was used.

The Crane shot can definitely be ascribed to Griffith, and as such is probably his clearest essential influential contribution to the development of Motion Picture technology.

This article describes the inventions, as well as usage of cranes in the movie industry in general, quote on the creation of the first crane and its usage in the movie Intolerance:

Griffith wanted to be able to rise to the top of the colossal Babylonian set and then descend to ground level again. The shot also moves closer to the set and retreats. According to David Samuelson who has written extensively on camera mobility in his books and for the American Society of Cinematographers, “The details of how these shots were accomplished have been lost in antiquity.

However. in Brownlow’s book, Dwan goes on to describe the device he designed to accomplish the look Griffith and Bitzer wanted. Dwan’s description supports Samelson’s theory of “a large tower spanning two railway wagons.”

According to Dwan, they would “…construct a device on a railroad track with an elevator in it. The device was very simple, built of tubing so it could easily be dismantled and put together. I designed the ideal of what to work for and suggested the use of railroad tracks, made utterly smooth so there would be no vibration, and railroad wheels.” The shot left audiences of the film reacting with audible gasps and left them in total wonder.

As noted before this article https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2006/great-directors/griffith/ does an admirable job of speaking meaningfully about Griffith’s work, in fact the heading for this section is really a play on the title of a previous article of mine

which I am now bringing in as it has some relevant sections to consider.

The first deals with what a critic must consider to be able to speak meaningfully about art:

A critic must also be able to differentiate between works that are

1. important in relation to their creator

2. Unimportant in relation to their creator

3. Important in relation to other works

4. Unimportant in relation to other works

And what an artist must consider

1. Things that I can use in making what I want

2. Things that I must go against in making what I want

As is immediately apparent the two factors that an artist must consider are integral to creating the third property that a critic must consider — if artists choose a work as falling into their category 1 or 2 then there is an important relation between those artists (going against something is still important, unimportance is a matter of indifference where art is concerned).

People are always talking about how influential Griffith was, and they are correct — especially where the word “was” pertains. To take a couple quotes from the aforementioned Senses of Cinema article:

Abel Gance stated that when he brought his film J’Accuse to the United States in 1921, “Only one opinion mattered to me and that was Griffith’s”. The respect shown to Griffith to the end of his life by such successful Hollywood directors as “Woody” Van Dyke and King Vidor was evidence of their feelings toward him. One does not have to defend Griffith with the unquestioning loyalty of Lillian Gish to acknowledge his influence on so many pioneers of the film world. But it is difficult to distill the essence of that influence.

Other directors and cameramen devised most of the effects that Griffith claimed to have invented. But Griffith expanded the narrative possibilities of those devices beyond what had previously been possible. As Kevin Brownlow said, Intolerance “…sparked off one of the most exciting and concentrated creative eras in the history of art.”

Griffith really reminds me of (don’t laugh) Dr. Samuel Johnson. Now, given Johnson’s anti-slavery this is probably a very personal and irony-tinted reaction but watching Birth of a Nation, and Intolerance had the affect on me of reading Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, that is to say it bored me to absolute tears.

Griffith was a great influence on his contemporaries and the generation that came immediately after him, that saw his movies in the cinema and thought “wow!” but to modern eyes there is nothing of interest.

Often when dealing with the arts of previous generations it can be beneficial or necessary to consider them in the context of their time, and believe me I am quite used to watching very old movies, reading very old books and dealing with art from a long time before my birth and getting some benefit from it. But these movies suck!

For example consider the first crane shot in Intolerance, already described as one that:

…left audiences of the film reacting with audible gasps and left them in total wonder.

It’s boring.

The appreciation that one can derive from that is the historian’s, to put yourself in the minds of the audience that until then had not seen the like, or the critic’s, to find what other directors in the coming years took the crane idea of Griffith and took it further, the engineer’s, to consider how cranes developed and the practical problems that they solved, and finally perhaps the ironist’s that can be amused at Griffith patenting ideas that nobody but him cared for and leaving his one notable technical achievement unpatented. But to a modern audience looking to enjoy some art without these specialized identifications or to the modern artist looking to be inspired, it’s extremely unimpressive.

I would like to say it is the racism of Birth of a Nation that makes it suck so badly, but really it’s not. Nor is it the whining of Intolerance (about how the NAACP accusing him of racism was the real intolerance — check it, Griffith invented anti-wokeness nearly 100 years before being woke was invented! What a Genius!)

The reason why Griffith’s art isn’t of interest any more is, I think, because he is a very serious man who treats everything with absolute seriousness, which is perhaps why I associate him with Johnson, another serious man. People can be great artists and serious (although most often a lighter touch seems to succeed better), but to last beyond their generation they need have something original to say. Griffith pioneered but the things he had to say were fairly pedestrian.

Amusingly the racism might be only thing that even makes Birth of a Nation still interesting, from a historical perspective, and to consider how the fashions in racism have changed. As was discussed in an earlier article by IG Agent 84:

Racism could be pragmatic in choosing beliefs about the various races, and constructing narratives that proved efficient and salable, much like astrology, a belief system that often attempts to don a pseudoscientific disguise and with such a disguise catch the easily misled and naive.

and

This is the strength of Racism. Although one would normally be tempted to conclude it was a failing. But because Racism can pursue its goals, subjugation and denigration of other races to a chosen in-narrative superior race, without any actual logical ties to reason, science, logic or rationality of any kind, it can change its narratives and text at will.

Thus when a particular narrative breaks down as the stereotypes it pursues no longer aligns with a large amount of the population, the Racist will just create a new stereotype in the same way when you are at a seance and your dead family member did not have red curly hair the spiritualist can get a bit dizzy and start seeing another vague figure whose hair cannot quite be made out until the audience supplies a helpful hint or two.

Just as the narrative of Birth of a Nation is tedious the Racism is absurd because it is no longer in fashion, it looks and feels wrong, based on characterizations that nobody can find believable any more. Just as one must imagine how the audiences of the day felt about the crane shot to feel a measure of respect for it, we must imagine how the black people of the day felt about these insulting representations — probably this is more easily done than the whole crane fantasy as it is perhaps easier to empathize with an oppressed people than it is to imagine being awestruck by the mundane.

Well, I don’t think I really have more to go on here about Griffith, he’s just not interesting enough. I do feel sorry for whoever is learning about the guy if they are interested in making art, instead of just being a historian.

This article was written by IG Agent 13, with a little help from IG Agent 6 and 84.

Previous Critical articles that relate this

The Music Articles written by IG Agent 19 and others that was the initial inspiration for my thinking about influence

where the whole project is laid out

Where the poor rankings of Stevie Nicks and Queen are handled.

Where we did our first 15 rankings

A tightly focused article on Elvis Costello and his influence.