The Griffith Project, 8: Films Produced in 1914–1915
Progetto Griffith, parte VIII: I film prodotti nel 1914–1915
Paolo Cherchi Usai (GCM): "Not surprisingly, the years 1914 and 1915 are widely perceived as the best known and the most intensely scrutinized in the career of D. W. Griffith. The background of this eventful period has been established with a certain degree of accuracy: late in 1913, after six years of unrelenting work and almost 500 films directed for the Biograph Company, Griffith signed an agreement with Harry E. Aitken, then co-owner with his brother Roy of two studios – Reliance (New York) and Majestic (Los Angeles) – whose films were released under the Mutual trademark. According to the terms of the contract, Griffith would produce his own feature films while supervising those made by others. By early 1914, the migration of the core Biograph personnel to the Aitken organization (including Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Blanche Sweet, Robert Harron, Henry B. Walthall, Mae Marsh, Donald Crisp, assistant director William Christy Cabanne, and story editor Frank Woods; cameraman Billy Bitzer joined them shortly afterwards) had already taken place. In the course of this annus mirabilis for cinema and world history (war between Germany and Russia was declared on 1 August), Griffith would produce The Birth of a Nation – the most acclaimed and controversial motion picture ever made – and begin working on what would become the “modern story” of Intolerance. This massive epic was bound to occupy him for a good portion of 1915, well into the spring of the following year."
"Film historians have long been accustomed to take The Birth of a Nation as a milestone for the periodization of Griffith’s career: first the Biograph shorts, then the features. In purely auteurist terms, the events of 1914–1915 are firmly established from a filmographic standpoint: four features directed in the first half of 1914 (with The Avenging Conscience becoming the first Griffith film to attract extensive attention in Europe), then The Birth of a Nation, its triumphal or contested screenings throughout the United States, and filming on the first section of Intolerance. Given his hyperactivity, what did Griffith actually manage to supervise for Reliance-Majestic and Fine Arts-Triangle? So far, this question has been marginalized as a footnote in the chronologies of his life. It is by all means an extremely chaotic footnote, made even more confusing by the uneven or contradictory information published by the Aitken companies in the trade journals of the period."
"According to Mutual advertisements, Griffith supervised all Reliance or Majestic productions during much of the first half of 1914. While the features were being marketed through State Rights, the short films in one or two reels were being supplied to theatres through Mutual’s contract distribution organization. They were produced on a regular schedule – a comedy on Monday, a drama on Wednesday, and so on. Hence the first question: Did Griffith have a say in the production of short films as well as the features? The situation is of special interest to early cinema scholarship, as it focuses on an important era in the history of film production: Mutual was in the midst of the transition from shorts to features, and caught between the established market for one-reelers and the growing demand for something bigger and better. There was even some uncertainty on how to define the difference between shorter and longer films – a two-reel film would sometimes be called a “feature”. All in all, Aitken found this new development quite profitable. He was supporting Thomas H. Ince’s ambitious productions, Mack Sennett’s popular comedies, and Griffith’s “masterpieces”, as well as several interesting small companies like Thanhouser. They were all beginning to advertise their stars: Griffith was already a big one, but this was also the time when Chaplin was making his name."
"To further complicate the issue, there is the question of the names given to the production and distribution companies and their corresponding studios. In June 1915, Mutual’s directors replaced Aitken with John Freuler; within a month, Aitken formed the Triangle Film Corporation and took Griffith, Ince, and Sennett with him. Starting with The Lamb (directed by W. Christy Cabanne and released in early October 1915), Triangle became the distributor for all Griffith-supervised pictures. From 1914 to 1919, Griffith rarely moved from his Los Angeles studio at 4500 Sunset Boulevard. Only its name was changed: from the “Reliance-Majestic” studio, to the “Fine Arts” and sometimes “Griffith Studio”, to the “Griffith Artcraft Studio”."
"No systematic attempt has yet been made to bring clarity to this quagmire and determine the extent of Griffith’s participation in these productions (Russell Merritt began tackling the case in his article “The Griffith Third: D. W. Griffith at Triangle”, published in the 1988 Pordenone Festival catalogue Sulla via di Hollywood, 1911–1920). The very term “supervision” is in itself vague enough, as it leaves room for conjecture on whether the term applied to the approval (or even drafting) of the script, cast, and crew, or involved an actual overseeing presence on the set. Both possibilities may apply to Griffith’s case, but the truth on this point may never be known. Inclusion of the “supervised” films in the corpus of The Griffith Project has inevitably been the object of debate within the editorial team since the beginning of this series. Indeed, one is tempted to say that Griffith must have been way too busy with The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance to spend any time on other people’s productions; however, there is adequate proof that many of the films under his nominal responsibility received some degree of personal attention on his part, as testified by trade journal reports and photographs showing him on the set. Several of these production units actually look like small-scale Griffith projects. Their directors were Griffith protégés such as James Kirkwood, Edward Dillon, and Donald Crisp; there were scripts by Anita Loos; and the casts were straight from the Biograph days: Henry B. Walthall, Blanche Sweet, Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Mae Marsh, Spottiswoode Aitken."
"As we felt that this evidence could not be ignored altogether, we have decided to open the debate on this question by incorporating in this and future programs a selection of films credited to Griffith’s supervision, in the hope that further research will shed some light upon this obscure aspect of the director’s activity. The films directed and supervised by Griffith in the years 1914 and 1915 define the parameters of this year’s program, the eighth installment of our multi-year research project involving the analysis of D. W. Griffith’s work. The texts and credits reproduced in this catalogue are excerpts from Volume 8 of The Griffith Project, presented in co-operation with BFI Publishing and available at the Festival." – Paolo Cherchi Usai (GCM)
AA resume:
DWG
502 W. Christy Cabanne: The Great Leap - LOST
503 The Battle of the Sexes (feature) - LOST: a 2 min fragment survives
504 James Kirkwood: The Gangsters - LOST
505 The Escape (feature) - LOST
506 James Kirkwood: The Floor Above - LOST
507 W. Christy Cabanne: The Dishonored Medal - LOST
508 James Kirkwood: The Mountain Rat - LOST
509 Home, Sweet Home (feature)
510 The Avenging Conscience
511 Donald Crisp / or Frederick Sullivan: The Painted Lady
512 [Production footage of The Birth of a Nation]
513 The Birth of a Nation (feature)
514 W. Christy Cabanne: Enoch Arden
515 George Nicholls: Ghosts
516 Raoul Walsh: Pillars of Society
517 W. Christy Cabanne: The Martyrs of the Alamo
518 W. Christy Cabanne: The Lamb
519 John Emerson: Old Heidelberg
520 Lloyd Ingraham: The Sable Lorcha - LOST? (KAVI: reels 4+5)
521 Paul Powell: The Lily and the Rose
522 W. Christy Cabanne: Double Trouble
523 Allan Dwan: Jordan Is a Hard Road - LOST
524 John Conway: The Penitentes - LOST
525 Francis Grandon: Cross Currents - LOST
526 Chester M. Franklin, Sidney A. Franklin: Let Katie Do It
527 Lloyd Ingraham: The Missing Links - LOST
528 Edward Dillon: Don Quixote - LOST
529 Paul Powell: The Wood Nymph - LOST
530 John Emerson: His Picture In the Papers
531 Chester M. Franklin, Sidney A. Franklin: Martha's Vindication - LOST
532 W. Christy Cabanne: Daphne and the Pirate - LOST
533 John B. O'Brien: The Flying Torpedo - LOST
32 films - 17 lost
5 DWG-directed features
3 survive
2 lost (fragment of The Battle of the Sexes)
D. W. GRIFFITH AFTER BIOGRAPH
The Birth of a Nation: the big step forward.
All others: a step backward.
The Lamb: Douglas Fairbanks's movie debut - has never screened at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, nor has His Picture In the Papers
Ibsen: twice.
A new feature: music credits.
Jack Conway: first feature.
Tully Marshall: feature film debut.
The Talmadge sisters arrive, p. 153.
Max Davidson as Sancho Panza, p. 156.
Marie Doro as Prunella, p. 160.
Seena Owen (Signe Auen, of Danish ancestry).
Daphne and the Pirate: "the grandfather of the pirate film" (Paul Spehr), p. 168.
Quality of the cinematography: impossible to assess due to the status of the prints displayed. (Biograph, Pathé).
Progetto Griffith, parte VIII: I film prodotti nel 1914–1915
Paolo Cherchi Usai (GCM): "Not surprisingly, the years 1914 and 1915 are widely perceived as the best known and the most intensely scrutinized in the career of D. W. Griffith. The background of this eventful period has been established with a certain degree of accuracy: late in 1913, after six years of unrelenting work and almost 500 films directed for the Biograph Company, Griffith signed an agreement with Harry E. Aitken, then co-owner with his brother Roy of two studios – Reliance (New York) and Majestic (Los Angeles) – whose films were released under the Mutual trademark. According to the terms of the contract, Griffith would produce his own feature films while supervising those made by others. By early 1914, the migration of the core Biograph personnel to the Aitken organization (including Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Blanche Sweet, Robert Harron, Henry B. Walthall, Mae Marsh, Donald Crisp, assistant director William Christy Cabanne, and story editor Frank Woods; cameraman Billy Bitzer joined them shortly afterwards) had already taken place. In the course of this annus mirabilis for cinema and world history (war between Germany and Russia was declared on 1 August), Griffith would produce The Birth of a Nation – the most acclaimed and controversial motion picture ever made – and begin working on what would become the “modern story” of Intolerance. This massive epic was bound to occupy him for a good portion of 1915, well into the spring of the following year."
"Film historians have long been accustomed to take The Birth of a Nation as a milestone for the periodization of Griffith’s career: first the Biograph shorts, then the features. In purely auteurist terms, the events of 1914–1915 are firmly established from a filmographic standpoint: four features directed in the first half of 1914 (with The Avenging Conscience becoming the first Griffith film to attract extensive attention in Europe), then The Birth of a Nation, its triumphal or contested screenings throughout the United States, and filming on the first section of Intolerance. Given his hyperactivity, what did Griffith actually manage to supervise for Reliance-Majestic and Fine Arts-Triangle? So far, this question has been marginalized as a footnote in the chronologies of his life. It is by all means an extremely chaotic footnote, made even more confusing by the uneven or contradictory information published by the Aitken companies in the trade journals of the period."
"According to Mutual advertisements, Griffith supervised all Reliance or Majestic productions during much of the first half of 1914. While the features were being marketed through State Rights, the short films in one or two reels were being supplied to theatres through Mutual’s contract distribution organization. They were produced on a regular schedule – a comedy on Monday, a drama on Wednesday, and so on. Hence the first question: Did Griffith have a say in the production of short films as well as the features? The situation is of special interest to early cinema scholarship, as it focuses on an important era in the history of film production: Mutual was in the midst of the transition from shorts to features, and caught between the established market for one-reelers and the growing demand for something bigger and better. There was even some uncertainty on how to define the difference between shorter and longer films – a two-reel film would sometimes be called a “feature”. All in all, Aitken found this new development quite profitable. He was supporting Thomas H. Ince’s ambitious productions, Mack Sennett’s popular comedies, and Griffith’s “masterpieces”, as well as several interesting small companies like Thanhouser. They were all beginning to advertise their stars: Griffith was already a big one, but this was also the time when Chaplin was making his name."
"To further complicate the issue, there is the question of the names given to the production and distribution companies and their corresponding studios. In June 1915, Mutual’s directors replaced Aitken with John Freuler; within a month, Aitken formed the Triangle Film Corporation and took Griffith, Ince, and Sennett with him. Starting with The Lamb (directed by W. Christy Cabanne and released in early October 1915), Triangle became the distributor for all Griffith-supervised pictures. From 1914 to 1919, Griffith rarely moved from his Los Angeles studio at 4500 Sunset Boulevard. Only its name was changed: from the “Reliance-Majestic” studio, to the “Fine Arts” and sometimes “Griffith Studio”, to the “Griffith Artcraft Studio”."
"No systematic attempt has yet been made to bring clarity to this quagmire and determine the extent of Griffith’s participation in these productions (Russell Merritt began tackling the case in his article “The Griffith Third: D. W. Griffith at Triangle”, published in the 1988 Pordenone Festival catalogue Sulla via di Hollywood, 1911–1920). The very term “supervision” is in itself vague enough, as it leaves room for conjecture on whether the term applied to the approval (or even drafting) of the script, cast, and crew, or involved an actual overseeing presence on the set. Both possibilities may apply to Griffith’s case, but the truth on this point may never be known. Inclusion of the “supervised” films in the corpus of The Griffith Project has inevitably been the object of debate within the editorial team since the beginning of this series. Indeed, one is tempted to say that Griffith must have been way too busy with The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance to spend any time on other people’s productions; however, there is adequate proof that many of the films under his nominal responsibility received some degree of personal attention on his part, as testified by trade journal reports and photographs showing him on the set. Several of these production units actually look like small-scale Griffith projects. Their directors were Griffith protégés such as James Kirkwood, Edward Dillon, and Donald Crisp; there were scripts by Anita Loos; and the casts were straight from the Biograph days: Henry B. Walthall, Blanche Sweet, Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Mae Marsh, Spottiswoode Aitken."
"As we felt that this evidence could not be ignored altogether, we have decided to open the debate on this question by incorporating in this and future programs a selection of films credited to Griffith’s supervision, in the hope that further research will shed some light upon this obscure aspect of the director’s activity. The films directed and supervised by Griffith in the years 1914 and 1915 define the parameters of this year’s program, the eighth installment of our multi-year research project involving the analysis of D. W. Griffith’s work. The texts and credits reproduced in this catalogue are excerpts from Volume 8 of The Griffith Project, presented in co-operation with BFI Publishing and available at the Festival." – Paolo Cherchi Usai (GCM)
AA resume:
DWG
502 W. Christy Cabanne: The Great Leap - LOST
503 The Battle of the Sexes (feature) - LOST: a 2 min fragment survives
504 James Kirkwood: The Gangsters - LOST
505 The Escape (feature) - LOST
506 James Kirkwood: The Floor Above - LOST
507 W. Christy Cabanne: The Dishonored Medal - LOST
508 James Kirkwood: The Mountain Rat - LOST
509 Home, Sweet Home (feature)
510 The Avenging Conscience
511 Donald Crisp / or Frederick Sullivan: The Painted Lady
512 [Production footage of The Birth of a Nation]
513 The Birth of a Nation (feature)
514 W. Christy Cabanne: Enoch Arden
515 George Nicholls: Ghosts
516 Raoul Walsh: Pillars of Society
517 W. Christy Cabanne: The Martyrs of the Alamo
518 W. Christy Cabanne: The Lamb
519 John Emerson: Old Heidelberg
520 Lloyd Ingraham: The Sable Lorcha - LOST? (KAVI: reels 4+5)
521 Paul Powell: The Lily and the Rose
522 W. Christy Cabanne: Double Trouble
523 Allan Dwan: Jordan Is a Hard Road - LOST
524 John Conway: The Penitentes - LOST
525 Francis Grandon: Cross Currents - LOST
526 Chester M. Franklin, Sidney A. Franklin: Let Katie Do It
527 Lloyd Ingraham: The Missing Links - LOST
528 Edward Dillon: Don Quixote - LOST
529 Paul Powell: The Wood Nymph - LOST
530 John Emerson: His Picture In the Papers
531 Chester M. Franklin, Sidney A. Franklin: Martha's Vindication - LOST
532 W. Christy Cabanne: Daphne and the Pirate - LOST
533 John B. O'Brien: The Flying Torpedo - LOST
32 films - 17 lost
5 DWG-directed features
3 survive
2 lost (fragment of The Battle of the Sexes)
D. W. GRIFFITH AFTER BIOGRAPH
The Birth of a Nation: the big step forward.
All others: a step backward.
The Lamb: Douglas Fairbanks's movie debut - has never screened at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, nor has His Picture In the Papers
Ibsen: twice.
A new feature: music credits.
Jack Conway: first feature.
Tully Marshall: feature film debut.
The Talmadge sisters arrive, p. 153.
Max Davidson as Sancho Panza, p. 156.
Marie Doro as Prunella, p. 160.
Seena Owen (Signe Auen, of Danish ancestry).
Daphne and the Pirate: "the grandfather of the pirate film" (Paul Spehr), p. 168.
Quality of the cinematography: impossible to assess due to the status of the prints displayed. (Biograph, Pathé).
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