Birth name:David Wark Griffith Birth:22 January 1875 Died:23 July 1948 Nationality:
Career / Biography
D W Griffith was one a the great pioneers of the early American cinema. Between 1908 and 1931 he made nearly 500 films with many being typical dama and romance films of the period. He is remember for his very successful but controversial 1915 film Birth Of A Nation and the 1916 film Intolerance. Birth Of A Nation was the first full length feature film (it originally ran to 12 reels of film), used a number of pioneering techniques (with cinematographer G W Bitzer) but is considered controversial because of the way it deals with racism and was the highest grossing film until Gone With The Wind and possibly one of the most profitable films made. He was one of the founders of United Artists (with Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks) but he produced only a few films for them. One of the techniques he developed was that of parallel editing or cross cutting where the story swaps between two stories happenng simultaneously to heighten drama and emotion as he first used in Corner of Wheat in 1909. His first wife was Linda Arvidson.
