The first multiple- reel movies included J. Stuart
Blackton’s The Life of Moses(1909, 5 reels), D. W.
Griffith’s Enoch Arden(1911, 34 min.), The Loves of
Queen Elizabeth(1912, directed by Henri Desfontaines
and Louis Mercanton, 44 min.), a film from France,
and such Italian epics as The Crusaders (1911,
4 reels, director unknown), Dante’s Inferno(1911,
5 reels, director unknown), Enrico Guazzoni’s Quo
Va d i s? (1913, 120 min.), and Giovanni Pastrone’s
Cabiria(1914, 181 min.). In 1914, clearly the turning
point, Edwin S. Porter released Tess of the Storm
Country(1914, 80 mins.) and directed an astonish-
ing 20 features before retiring from film directing
the next year. Cecil B. DeMille, another industry
founder, began his feature film career with The
Squaw Man(1914, 74 mins.) and made 14 features in
1915 alone. Griffith’s Judith of Bethulia(61 min.) was
released in 1914 and The Birth of a Nation(187 min.)
in 1915.
In terms of their social impact, the silent movies
made during this period established trends that
continue today. They appealed to all socioeconomic
levels and stimulated the popular imagination
through their establishment and codification of
narrative genres and character stereotypes, partic-
ularly those that reinforced prejudices against
Native Americans, African Americans, and for-
eigners in general. Their depiction of certain types
of behavior considered immoral provoked calls for
censorship, which would become an even bigger
problem in the next decade and on into today and
raised issues concerning movie content and vio-
lence. Although most jobs in the film industry
remained male-dominated for the next fifty years,
at least acting jobs for women were plentiful from
the beginning. Two female directors were at work—
Lois Weber and Alice Guy Blaché—and the African
American actor Bert Williams starred in his first
movie in 1915.
The movie director was central to the develop-
ment of the art of the motion picture in these early
years. D. W. Griffith would soon emerge as the most
important of these figures, and The Birth of a Nation
would become known as one of the most important
and controversial movies ever made. While its
racist content is repugnant, its form is technically
brilliant. Griffith, who borrowed freely from other
early filmmakers, was an intuitive and innovative
artist, and in this legendary movie we see him per-
fecting and regularizing (if not inventing) a style
that included a dazzling set of technical achieve-
ments: the 180-degree system; cutting between
familiar types of shots (close-up, medium shot, long
shot, extreme long shot, and soft-focus shot); multi-
ple camera setups, accelerated montage, and pan-
ning and tilting; and the exploitation of camera
angles, in-camera dissolves and fades, the flash-
back, the iris shot, the mask, and the split screen.
He also placed a high value on using a full sym-
phonic score and, more important, developing
screen acting by training actors for the special
demands of the silent cinema. The longest (3 hours)
and most expensive ($110,000) American movie yet
made, The Birth of a Nationattracted enormous
audiences, garnered the critics’ praise, and earned,
within five years of its opening, approximately $15
million. However, the social and political stance of
its story had another impact.
Born in Kentucky, Griffith, who was in sympathy
with the antebellum South, tells his story by distort-
ing history and reaffirming the racist stereotypes of
his time and background. The movie provoked con-
troversy and riots and was banned in many North-
ern states. Yet this profoundly American epic, a work
of vicious propaganda, is also a cinematic master-
piece that garnered international prestige for
American silent movies. Unfortunately—for the
future history of the movies—it demonstrated how
a manipulative movie could appeal to the public’s
worst prejudices and make a fortune as a result.
Although Griffith made other films, including such
silent masterpieces as Intolerance (1916), Broken
Blossoms(1919), Way down East(1920), Orphans of
the Storm(1921), and Dream Street(1921)—a very
early but unsuccessful attempt to add recorded
voices to a movie—his career was virtually finished
by 1931.
The most successful American silent feature
movies were epics (Erich von Stroheim’s Greed,
1924), melodramas (King Vidor’s The Big Parade,
1925), and comedies. Comedy in particular was a
major factor in Hollywood’s early success. There
were gifted comic actors (Buster Keaton, Charles
Chaplin, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, Harold Lloyd,442 CHAPTER 10FILM HISTORY