Griffith, David Wark (1875-1948)
Pioneering American motion-picture director, who established a new standard for motion-picture production. He is often called The Father of the Motion Picture.
Griffith was born in La Grange , Kentucky, and was educated in local schools. After working as an actor in stock and road theater companies, he became a motion-picture actor for the Biograph Film Company in 1908, later serving as a director for the studio in New York City and in California. For Biograph alone he made more than 450 short films. There, too, he assembled his own stock company of film professionals, including many of the era's most notable actors and directors. He also collaborated extensively with the legendary cameraman Billy Bitzer.
In 1913 Griffith left Biograph for Reliance-Majestic studios and later became an independent producer. His pictures Judith of Bethulia (1914), Birth of a Nation (1915), and Intolerance (1916) established him as the leading motion-picture producer of the time. Birth of a Nation is considered among the most important films ever made, for its success established not only the feature-length film but also the Hollywood star system. The motion picture demonstrates the disturbing power of film propaganda: Its racist elements provoked protests, riots, and other violence, and eventually a move toward film censorship laws. Intolerance, a grand-scaled film pursuing four story lines simultaneously, was not successful at the box office but has had a significant influence on the subsequent development of film art.
Until Griffith's time, motion pictures had been short, rarely exceeding one reel; episodic rather than dramatic; and poorly produced, acted, and edited. Griffith's films were frequently several hours in length, contained powerful dramatic situations and vivid characters, and were produced with technical virtuosity. He perfected some of the best-known devices in motion-picture production, such as the close-up, a close view of a character's face or figure or of an object, shown for dramatic emphasis; the fade-out, a transition from one scene to another by the gradual disappearance of the first scene from the screen; the cutback, or flashback, which for purposes of clarification of plot or characterization, introduces scenes antedating those already shown; and, most importantly, the use of parallel editing, the cross-cutting of footage of simultaneous action to achieve suspense.
In 1920, with film actors Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and Charlie Chaplin, Griffith formed the United Artists Corporation for the production of feature pictures. Among the motion pictures he directed for that company were Broken Blossoms (1919), Way Down East (1920), The Orphans of the Storm (1922), America (1924), Battle of the Sexes (1928), and Lady of the Pavements (1929), all of them silent films except for Lady, which included some singing. Griffith made two talking pictures—Abraham Lincoln (1930) and The Struggle (1931)—but they were not as successful as his silent films.
GRİFFİTH David Wark KİMDİR? HAKKINDA
(1875 Crestwood/Kentucky – 1948 Hollywood), Amerikalı film yönetmeni ve yapımcısı. Sinemanın öncülerinden olan Griffith, sinema dilini ve çağdaş sinemayı kuranlar arasında yer alır. 500′den fazla film yaptı ve günümüz sinemasında artık standart hâle gelmiş birçok tekniği, o buldu ya da geliştirdi. İlk filmini 1908′de çevirdi. 1915 yılında “Birth of a Nation” (Bir Ulusun Doğuşu) adlı başyapıtını yarattı. İlk uzun Amerikan filmi olan bu epik yapım, Amerikan İç Savaşı’nı açık bir zenci düşmanlığı içinde işliyordu. Film yıllarca afişte kaldı ve Hollywood’un temelini attı. Bunu yine bir epik film olan “intolerance” (Hoşgörüsüzlük) izledi. Koşut kurguyla anlatılmış dört öyküyü işleyen ve tarih boyunca insanoğlunun hoşgörüsüzlüğünü yansıtan film muazzam dekorların ve sayısız figüranın kullanıldığı gösterişli bir yapımdı, ama zamanının ilerisindeydi. Bu yüzden tutulmadı ve Griffith, yıllar yılı bu filmin yapım borçlarını ödemek zorunda kaldı. 1919′da Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford ve Charles Chaplin (Şarlo) ile United Artists ortaklığını kurdu. 1930′lara gelindiğinde, artık onun modasının geçtiğine hükmeden yapımcılarca bir kenara atıldı.
Lumière Brothers
Name of two brothers, Louis (1862-1954) and Auguste (1864-1948), French photographic manufacturers, inventors, and pioneer filmmakers, who in 1895 invented an early picture camera that also functioned as a projector. In contrast to the cumbersome machine of American inventor Thomas Alva Edison, their device was lightweight and reasonably portable—well suited for outdoor use. Moreover, it used less film, operated more quietly, and projected more smoothly than the Edison camera. They called their device the Cinématographe, from which the word cinema is derived. Their short film, La Sortie des usines Lumière (Quitting Time at the Lumière Factory), probably the first real motion picture ever made, was shown in 1895 at the Grand Café on the Boulevard des Capuchines in Paris, together with several short clips, one of which startled the audience with the image of an oncoming train. This occasion is regarded by some scholars as the birth of world cinema.
Increasing their staff rapidly, the Lumière brothers produced a myriad of short subjects, typically newsreels or documentaries, and by 1898 their film catalog included more than 1000 motion pictures. Nonetheless, they believed the new invention to be merely a novelty and told French pioneer George Meliès (who would explore the storytelling capabilities of the medium) that “cinema is an invention without a future.
Pudovkin, Vsevolod Ilarionovich (1893-1953)
Soviet motion-picture director and actor, known for his ability to convey emotions through the cumulative juxtaposition of different—often contrasting—images, achieved by precise techniques of film editing. He trained at the State Film School in Moscow under influential Soviet director Lev Kushelov. He used new techniques of film editing, particularly intercutting, in his character-centered stories. Pudovkin's major early films, Mother (1926) and The End of St. Petersburg (1927), were followed by the internationally successful Storm Over Asia (1928). His sound films include Deserter (1933), Suvorov (1941), and Admiral Nakhimov (1946). Pudovkin's theoretical writings include Film Technique, much of which systematizes his views on the art of editing, and Film Acting, which remains significant for its emphasis on the importance of naturalistic, untheatrical performance.
Eisenstein, Sergey Mikhaylovich (1898-1948)
Russian stage and motion-picture director, whose creative film-editing techniques and writings on film theory earned him lasting worldwide repute as a master of montage and the use of symbols. He was the great theorist and practitioner of noncontinuity editing, in which meaning arises from contrasting images, rhythms, and graphic details.
Born in Riga (now in Latvia), Eisenstein studied engineering at the Petrograd Institute of Civil Engineering. His subsequent experience with an amateur theater group in the army contributed to his decision to pursue a theatrical career. About 1920 he became a scene designer at the experimental Proletkult Theater. This experience inspired him to study at the State School for Stage Direction, and soon he began to direct Proletkult productions. Eisenstein's unconventional ideas on dramatic art included using contrasting images to elicit emotional reactions in the audience.
Eisenstein made his first full-length motion picture, Strike, with the Proletkult collective in 1924. A well-known sequence in this film about striking workers contains scenes of cattle being slaughtered intercut with scenes of workers being shot by government soldiers. Eisenstein's next film, Potemkin, completed in 1925, is considered a silent-film masterpiece. Commissioned by the Soviet government to commemorate the 1905 Revolution, Eisenstein produced in Potemkin one of the most famous sequences in silent films. Using a long flight of steps in Odesa as his setting, he intercut detail shots with action scenes: close-ups of guns and faces contrast with scenes of fleeing civilians and attacking soldiers. His skill in manipulating visual composition was widely recognized after Potemkin, and the film has been repeatedly named by film scholars as amoung the greatest ever made.
Eisenstein's other films are October (1928), also known as Ten Days That Shook the World; The General Line (1929), a propaganda film on collective agriculture that for political reasons was released with the title Old and New after its completion, with substantive changes; Romance sentimentale (1930), a short sound film made with Grigori Alexandrov; the abandoned project Que Viva Mexico! (1931-1932; codirected by Alexandrov), which was reedited and released later as A Time in the Sun (1939); the unfinished Bezhin Meadow (1935-1937); Alexander Nevsky (1938; see Alexander Nevsky), a sumptuous historical epic; and Ivan the Terrible, Part I (1945) and Part II (completed in 1946 but not released until 1958; see Ivan IV Vasilyevich). Eisenstein was about to begin work on the third part of Ivan when he died. His passion for and understanding of the potential of motion pictures made him one of the greatest innovators in the history of cinema. His extensive writings, which provide the first substantial film aesthetic, were originally published as Film Sense (1942), Film Form (1949), Notes of a Film Director (1959), and Film Essays with a Lecture (1968), although more recent translations have been issued by the British Film Institute.
Georges Melies
A professional magician by training, first saw the new "moving pictures" in 1895. Little over a year later, Melies was filming and projecting his own creations. By accident, he discovered that he could use stop-motion photography to render trick visual effects. Melies was also the first to use techniques such as the fade-in, the fade-out, and the dissolve to create the first real narrative films. Melies made over 500 films, but his most famous -- Voyage dans la lune, Le (1902) (Voyage to the Moon)-- made him a fortune. Still, Melies, trained in classic eighteenth century theater, conceived all of his films in terms of fully played-out scenes. Unable to keep up with the changing industry, the end of his life was wrought with poverty, yet his films would be monumental stepping stones for great auteurs such as D.W. Griffith.
Edwin Stratton Porter
- Director, film pioneer. Next to Thomas A. Edison, Edwin S. Porter was the most prominent innovator in the early years of motion pictures. Actually, Edison was more interested in the sound application to the mechanical moving picture that he had invented. Edwin S. Porter, a cameraman who turned director, showed the cynical Edison a practical and entertaining reason that would make the public come back again and again to see Edison's product. Thomas Edison was accustomed to filming everyday events, such as a snow storm in N.Y. City, or the landing of sailors in Cuba. Porter is called the "father of American story film." He was the one who realized the means to tell a story on film by the use of editing. Through his technique of physically splicing the story together, Porter put the word "move" in movie scenario. Porter created a fictional scenario with two groundbreaking films that absolutely mesmerized the public (and still stand out in the memories of those young enough to remember), The Life of an American Fireman (The Edison Company, 1902) and The Great Train Robbery (The Edison Company, 1903). Porter also pre-dated Griffith with the use of close-ups, editing of film to create suspense and the dissolve (an image fading out or in). Edison, ever the pragmatist, was convinced. Porter's vision made it possible for the average and less than average citizen to take in a movie and be caught up in the magic.
When most new faces and talents were barely beginning to filter into the infant movie industry, Porter was moving onward and upward. He left Edison in 1909 and attempted to establish his own production company, but in 1912 he was given an offer he couldn't refuse. Adolph Zukor handed Porter a plum of "director general and treasurer of Famous Players." Porter supervised the production of studios' entire output. Once Porter was put in this position, his innovative streak in cinema storytelling faded. Perhaps this was because he was inadvertently an early pioneer of the stringent "studio system" films produced through a factory style process that the Famous Players - Paramount Studio was beginning to enforce. This system would eventually become the norm for all film studios. While at Famous Players Porter directed five of Mary Pickford's films: In the Bishop's Carriage (Famous Players, 1913), co-directed with J. Searle Dawley; Hearts Adrift (Famous Players, 1914); A Good Little Devil (Famous Players, 1914); Tess of the Storm Country (Famous Players, 1914); and Such a Little Queen (Famous Players, 1914), co-directed with Hugh Ford.
By 1915 Porter sold his share of Famous Players stock, quit the studio and invested his savings in a company that produced motion picture equipment, called the Precision Machine Corp. He was president of this very successful venture. With this business Porter could tinker with his beloved, moviemaking machinery to his heart's content. He experimented over the years with various camera techniques to improve the quality of the specialized equipment that motion pictures required. In 1929, like many seemingly solid businesses, Porter's company crashed with the stock market. He never recovered his fortune. Porter, being a self effacing genius, simply went back to work in much humbler surroundings, fixing various motion picture devices in a small shop. The man who had taken Edison's gift and enhanced the possibilities of its magic for the world passed away in 1941. The news was vaguely acknowledged by the press and by Hollywood.
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