Influential Filmmakers

D. W. GRIFFITH (1875–1948) Griffith took glimpses and made schemes. He saw that suspense was our reason for watching. His objects of suspense were archaic, trite, and worse (virginity, piety, the South’s nobility), but a business was born with 1915’s Birth of a Nation—along with every warning that the industry might be scurrilous, dangerous, and the province of rascals.

President Wilson called the movie “history written in lightning”—so pretentious film criticism was under way, too. Despite attendant geniuses (the Gish sisters, the cameraman Billy Bitzer), Griffith’s movies are hard to watch now. His world of film was perishable—everything goes off fast. He made people sit for three hours, and come back for more. It was the essential principle of American life: keep the public still. ORSON WELLES (1915–1985) Welles believed in being a great man. Therefore if he did films, filmmaking must be a great medium and art—an Art. He ...