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D.W. Griffith Masterworks (2 Volumes) [9 DVD9s & 3 DVD5s]

Posted By: mook45

Date: 15 Mar 2011 14:24:01

IMDb
Vol 1 Kino page
Vol 2 Kino page
SilentEra

Widely regarded as the father of American film, David Wark Griffith (1875-1948) revolutionized the language of cinema and transformed a five-cent novelty into an art form. His historical epics and Victorian melodramas achieved new heights of emotional richness, created unbearable dramatic tension, and sparked controversies that continue to rage, nearly a century later.

Biograph Shorts (Special Edition) (1909-1913, 362 mins) [2 DVD9s = 7.62/6.82GB]

The selection of motion pictures featured in this two-disc set traces D. W. Griffith's rapid, unparalleled development as a filmmaker during his five year stint at the Biograph Company – a development that contributed substantially to the emergence of film as a powerful form of cultural expression.

From the crude humor and melodramatic devices of The Adventures of Dollie (1908) through the remarkably dynamic The Battle at Elderbush Gulch (1913), one is able to witness Griffith's rapid gains in self-confidence and increasing command over the still new medium of motion pictures.

Griffith was noted for many achievements, but among his most striking was the use of parallel editing, both for purpose of suspense (An Unseen Enemy, The Lesser Evil) and to generate a powerful social commentary (Corner in Wheat, The Usurer). But, as The Unchanging Sea demonstrates, he was also able to harness the technique for more elegiac purposes. In these fifteen films – plus eight bonus shorts – one finds Griffith experimenting with (and thus contributing to the development of) various genres, including the Western (The Last Drop of Water), the crime picture (The Musketeers of Pig Alley), and the seafaring drama (Enoch Arden, one of Griffith's earliest two-reel endeavors).

Disc Features:

Disc One contents:

* Those Awful Hats (1909. 3 mins.)
* The Sealed Room (1909. 11 mins.)
* Corner in Wheat (1909. 14 mins.)
* The Unchanging Sea (1910. 13 mins.)
* His Trust (1911. 14 mins.)
* The New York Hat (1912. 16 mins.)
* An Unseen Enemy (1912. 15 mins.)
* The Mothering Heart (1913. 23 mins.)
* (bonus short) The Adventures of Dollie (1908. 12 mins.)
* (bonus short) The Usurer (1910. 18 mins.)
* (bonus short) Enoch Arden (1911. 33 mins.)
* (bonus short) The Miser's Heart (1911. 16 mins.)

Disc Two contents:

* The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912. 18 mins.)
* The Burglar's Dilemma (1912. 15 mins.)
* The Sunbeam (1912. 15 mins.)
* The Painted Lady (1912. 12 mins.)
* One is Business, The Other Crime (1912. 15 mins.)
* Death's Marathon (1913. 15 mins.)
* The Battle at Elderbush Gulch (1913. 29 mins.)
* (bonus short) The Last Drop of Water (1911. 13 mins.)
* (bonus short) Friends (1912. 13 mins.)
* (bonus short) The Lesser Evil (1912. 13 mins.)
* (bonus short) The Massacre (1912. 30 mins.)

The Birth of a Nation (1915, 186 mins)[DVD9 & DVD5 = 7.05/4.36GB]

More than 75 years after its initial release, The Birth of a Nation remains one of the most controversial films ever made and a landmark achievement in film history that continues to fascinate and enrage audiences. It is the epic story of two families, one northern and one southern, during and after the Civil War. D. W. Griffith's masterful direction combines brilliant battle scenes and tender romance with a vicious portrayal of African-Americans. It was the greatest feature-length blockbuster yet to be produced in the United States and the first to be shown in the White House. After seeing it, President Woodrow Wilson remarked it was "like writing history with lightning!"

There was a time when critics sought to de-emphasize the film's content and celebrate the picture as an artistic masterpiece, but from today's perspective, such an approach seems less tenable. However flawed The Birth of a Nation now seems as an historical epic, it is undeniable that the film itself made history. In cities and states across the country, it energized the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which tried to have the film banned, or at least the most gruesome scenes censored. The film also inspired African-Americans to move into filmmaking as a way to offer alternative images and stories.

With Henry B. Walthall, Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Ralph Lewis

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.
Salman Rushdie

Disc Features:
* "The Making of The Birth of a Nation" (1992. 24 mins. Produced by David Shepard)
* Filmed prologue to The Birth of a Nation (1930. 6 mins. Featuring D. W. Griffith and Walter Huston)
* Civil War Shorts directed by D. W. Griffith:
o In the Border States (1910. 16 mins.)
o The House with the Closed Shutters (1910. 17 mins.)
o The Fugitive (1910. 17 mins.)
o His Trust (1910. 14 mins. – courtesy David Shepard. Music by Robert Israel, performed by the Biograph Quartet)
o His Trust Fulfilled (1910. 11 mins.)
o Swords and Hearts (1911. 16 mins.)
o The Battle (1911. 17 mins.)
* New York vs. The Birth of a Nation – an archive of information documenting the battles over the film's 1922 re-release, including protests by the NAACP, transcripts of meetings, legal documents, newspaper articles, and a montage of scenes ordered cut by the New York Censor Board.
* Excerpts from a The Birth of a Nation souvenir book (1915) and several original programs.

Intolerance (1916, 197 mins)[DVD9 = 7.37GB]

D. W. Griffith had a vision of the movies as the greatest spiritual force the world had ever known. Just one year after the huge success of Birth of a Nation, he was emboldened to prove his faith in the new medium with the superproduction Intolerance.

Four separate stories are interwoven: the fall of Babylon, the death of Christ, the massacre of the Huguenots, and a contemporary (early 20th Century) drama – all crosscut and building with enormous energy to a thrilling chase and finale. Through the juxtaposition of these well-known sagas, Griffith joyously makes clear his markedly deterministic view of history, namely that the suffering of innocents makes possible the salvation of the current generation, symbolized by the boy in the modern love story.

Griffith's concept and execution of Intolerance are awesome, but audiences of 1916 were generally bewildered by his lofty intentions. He aimed too high and spent the rest of his career paying off the large debts that his vision had incurred.

With Miriam Cooper, Mae Marsh, Margery Wilson, Constance Talmadge, Robert Harron, Elmer Clifton, Tully Marshall

Disc Features:
* Filmed introduction of Orson Welles

* Excerpts from Cabiria(1914) and The Last Days of Pompeii(1914), two films that inspired Griffith to make Intolerance

* Text excerpts from "Away With Meddlers: A Declaration of Independence" and "The Rise and Fall of Free Speech in America," two pamphlets published by D. W. Griffith at the time of Intolerance's release

* Excerpt from The Fall of Babylon (1916) which offers an alternate (happy) ending to the Babylonian sequence.

* About the score

Broken Blossoms (1919, 90 mins) [DVD5 = 3.58GB]

D. W. Griffith reached a pinnacle of expressiveness in this tender yet tragic tale of love and suffering in the seedy Limehouse district of London.

Richard Barthelmess gives a sensitive portrayal of a Chinese man who travels to England to spread the pacifist teachings of the Orient, but it is Lillian Gish who illuminates the screen. In this, the most heart-rending performance of her career, she plays a fifteen-year-old street urchin who longs to escape her miserable existence. Emotionally scarred by the torment and neglect of her abusive father (Donald Crisp), she collapses in the shop of the lonely and disillusioned "yellow man." As he tenderly nurses her back to health, an unspoken romance flowers between them, awakening in each of them feelings of love they thought themselves forever denied.

In some ways, Broken Blossoms was Griffith's response to critics of The Birth Of A Nation, an effort to clear himself of lingering charges of racism. However, cinematic convention forbade physical intimacy between the two races. With this in mind, Griffith took what might have been a bold interracial romance and turned it into something more ethereal: a form of cinematic poetry that engages the viewer through subtle gestures and changes of expression, meticulously choreographed and gracefully assembled.

Featuring Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess, Donald Crisp. This exclusive Kino on Video edition was digitally remastered from a 35mm print at the correct projection speed, with color tints and a new score by Joseph Turrin, recorded in digital stereo.

Disc Features:
* Filmed introduction by Lillian Gish, including excerpts from Gish's film Romola (1925, MGM).

* The complete text of Thomas Burke's original story

* A recording of the 1919 song "Broken Blossoms"

* D. W. Griffith on Leading Ladies

* About the score

Orphans of the Storm (1921, 150 mins)[DVD9 = 6.11GB]

Re-creating the aristocratic splendor and devestating poverty of 18th-century France, David Wark Griffith weaves an emotionally-charged tale of two delicate souls caught in the tempest of revolution.

Lillian and Dorothy Gish star as the resourceful Henriette and the blind Louise, who leave their countryside home for Paris in the hopes of having Louise's sight restored. Spied by the lecherous Marquis de Praille (Morgan Wallace), Henriette is abducted and the women are tragically separated in a city on the brink of anarchy. With the help of a kind-hearted nobleman (Joseph Schildkraut), Henriette endeavors to find the helpless Louise, but cruel fate repeatedly thwarts her efforts. Griffith exploits their heart-wrenching dilemma with masterful skill, crowning the drama with politcal intrigue, spectacle and his usual degree of social moralizing (staunchly disclaiming any parallels between the French Revolution and recent waves of "bolshevism"), drawing the multi-layered epic to its white-knuckled climax outside the old city gates of Paris, beneath the gleam of the guillotine's scarlet blade.

Orphans of the Storm provided Lillian Gish with her final role for Griffith, bringing to a close the long and fruitful collaboration that began in 1912 with An Unseen Enemy (Lillian's and Dorothy's film debut).

With Lillian Gish, Dorothy Gish, Joseph Schildkraut

Disc Features:
# Filmed introduction by Orson Welles

# Footage taken at D. W. Griffith's funeral

# Radio eulogy for Griffith by Erich von Stroheim

# Portfolio of rare Griffith photographs

# Rescued From the Eagle's Nest (1908), a rare film starring D. W. Griffith the actor

# "The Story of David Wark Griffith" A lengthy biography of Griffith published in Photoplay Magazine in 1916

The Avenging Conscience (1914, 84 mins)[DVD5 = 4.11GB]

The First Great American Horror Film The Avenging Conscience
Includes Griffith’s 1909 drama Edgar Allan Poe

D.W. Griffith indulged his lifelong fascination with Edgar Allan Poe in this ambitious amalgam of the writer’s poetry and prose: “Annabel Lee” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” flavored with shades of “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Black Cat,” and “The Conqueror Worm.”

Poe’s tales are interwoven in one tragedy-laden narrative of a young man (Henry B. Walthall) who yearns to escape from his overbearing, one-eyed uncle (Spottiswoode Aitken). After the nephew murders the ogre, he and his lover (Blanche Sweet) are wracked by guilt and tormented by nightmares, ghosts, and demonic entities that drive them to even more horrifying extremes.

Just as Poe cloaked his horrors in artful poetry and prose, so does Griffith filter the story’s macabre elements through a Victorian lens, gilding it with quaint symbolism without diminishing its impact.
When asked, in 1925, to rank the cinema’s greatest achievements, critic Gilbert Seldes called special attention to this film. “The picture was projected in a palpable atmosphere,” he wrote in his book The Seven Lively Arts, “After ten years I recall dark masses and ghostly rays of light.”

Disc Features:
* Mastered in HD from a 35mm archive print from the Raymond Rohauer Collection
* Piano score compiled and performed by music historian Martin Marks (2.0 Stereo)
* Griffith’s 1909 short Edgar Allen Poe (sic), mastered in HD from a 35mm archive print from the Museum of Modern Art
* Notes on the preparation of the music score

Way Down East (1920, 149 mins)[DVD9 = 7.24GB]

D.W. Griffith’s penchant for Victorian melodrama reached its height of expression in WAY DOWN EAST. First performed in 1898, Lottie Blair Parker’s play was one of the most successful stageworks ever written, a theatrical chestnut, heavy with sentiment, that cried out for the touch of the master. Griffith captured the appeal of Parker’s original, while embossing it with devices borrowed from other popular melodramas, such as the climactic chase across an ice floe (inspired by stage adaptations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin).

Lillian Gish stars as a small-town girl who is seduced, impregnated, and cast aside by Lennox Sanderson, a wealthy playboy (Lowell Sherman). To escape the shame of having a fatherless child, Anna changes her name and starts a new life in a small farming community, where she meets David, an icon of male virtue and decency (Richard Barthelmess). Their delicate happiness is threatened when Lennox arrives in town, and word of Anna’s unsavory past begins to spread.

Disc Features:
* Score compiled from historic photoplay music, performed by The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra (2.0 Stereo)
* Excerpts from Lottie Blair Parker’s original play
* Film Clip: The ice floe sequence of the Edison Studio’s production of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
* Image gallery
* Notes on the preparation of the music score

Sally of the Sawdust (1925, 113 mins)[DVD9 = 5.86GB]

In a fascinating departure from the austere moral drama in which he specialized, D.W. Griffith demonstrates his talent for warm-hearted comedy with SALLY OF THE SAWDUST.

Fresh from the Ziegfeld Follies, W.C. Fields made his second screen appearance as Professor Eustace McGargle, a lovably disreputable confidence man who becomes the unlikely guardian of an orphaned circus waif (Carol Dempster). Intending to return Sally to her grandparents, McGargle learns that her wealthy and esteemed grandfather (Erville Alderson) is a stern judge who harbors a deep contempt for shysters and show people. Faster than a sucker can say “three-card monte,” McGargle finds himself wanted by the police and chased by bootleggers, while trying to protect his cherished Sally, who has won the affection of a slumming socialite (Alfred Lunt).

SALLY provided Griffith ingenue Carol Dempster (whose work for the director is generally overshadowed by that of her predecessors, Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish) with a delightful role: the spry, innocent and hot-tempered dancing girl wholly devoted to her criminal “Poppy.” At the same time, it showcases the comic juggling and dry wit that would make a legend of W.C. Fields (who remade the film in 1936 under the title of the original play, “Poppy.”)

Disc Features:
* Filmed introduction by Orson Welles
* Theatrical trailer
* Image gallery

Abraham Lincoln (1930, 93 mins) & The Struggle (1931, 93 mins)[DVD9 = 7.67GB]

The silent cinema’s renowned pioneer, D.W. Griffith, directed only two sound features: ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1930)
and THE STRUGGLE (1931), both collected on this DVD.

Returning to the historic era of his greatest success, Griffith paid homage to the sixteenth President in this moving drama starring Walter Huston (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre). Focusing on Lincoln’s personal tragedies, as well as his great accomplishments, Griffith’s film depicts the American icon with a sensitivity and grace rivaled only by John Ford’s Young
Mr. Lincoln.

A departure from the historical super-productions for which he was known, THE STRUGGLE was an intimate drama of an American everyman who falls victim to the debilitating affliction of alcoholism. No stranger to the destructive influence of drink, Griffith pulls no punches in dramatizing its potential horrors, especially in the terrifying climax when Jimmie, tormented by delirium tremors, attacks his young daughter (Edna Hagan) in the hovel that was once their happy home.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN has been mastered in HD from the Museum of Modern Art’s 35mm restoration of Griffith’s historical epic. THE STRUGGLE was remastered in HD from a 35mm archive print from the Raymond Rohauer Collection.

Disc Features:
# Mastered in HD from 35mm archive prints
# Introduction to The Birth of a Nation, featuring
Walter Huston and D.W. Griffith on the set
of Abraham Lincoln
# Lincoln’s assassination: comparison of scenes
in Abraham Lincoln and The Birth of a Nation
# Gallery of photos and original pressbook for
Abraham Lincoln

D.W. Griffith: Father of Film (1993, 156 mins)[DVD9 = 7.66GB]

In this acclaimed three-part documentary, celebrated film historians Kevin Brownlow and David Gill (Unknown Chaplin, Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow) tell the proud, sad story of D.W. Griffith (1875-1948): the man who first brought artistry and ambition to the movies, and then, having dragged a reluctant American film industry to international prominence, found it had no more use for him.

Judiciously chosen film clips illustrate exactly how, within seven years of going to work for the Biograph Studios in 1908, Griffith painstakingly refined camera and acting techniques; how trial and error led him to create a grammar that was the cinema’s own; and how, in 1915, he presented the fully-fledged film masterwork The Birth of a Nation.

Griffith strove to outdo himself in skill, spectacle and soaring ambition, and Brownlow and Gill illuminate the successes that highlighted his career: Intolerance, Broken Blossoms, Way Down East and Orphans of the Storm. A wealth of background detail is provided by vivid accounts of Griffith at work (from Lillian Gish, Blanche Sweet, Karl Brown, Stanley Cortez, among others), and by a comprehensive account of the great controversy sparked by The Birth of a Nation.

With its extensive historic details and dazzling extracts from beautifully tinted prints, Brownlow and Gill’s three-part documentary is the perfect reminder of just how great Griffith’s achievements were.

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