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A century ago, a man started directing moving pictures who would change them forever. A man who pioneered the craft and made cinema the dominant narrative art form of the 20th century. He influenced the first masters, like Eisenstein, Lang, Dreyer and Ford. Welles called him "the premier genius of our medium" and Chaplin called him "the teacher of us all."

The father of American cinema, David Llewelyn Wark "D. W." Griffith was born January 22, 1875 in rural Kentucky. His father was a decorated colonel for the Southern Confederacy, who read in a booming voice to young Griffith from Shakespeare, Poe, Dickens, Longfellow and, of course, the Bible. But his father died when Griffith was only seven, leaving a family struggling to survive. Many of his films can be seen as a search for a father figure in a defeated land, for someone to protect the poor women and children from the oppressive rich and powerful.

Griffith's mother, a devout evangelical Methodist, had an influence on his development, as did the growth of Methodism in the Third Great Awakening (1858-1908), and in the related Social Gospel movement. Griffith's aesthetic was formed by the job he took in a bookstore, adding to his father's repertoire with voracious reading. Finally, he was shaped by the South in which he was raised. As biographer Gerald Mast says, "His films always reflected a special fondness for rural life and rural people, a longing for an idyllic pastoral world, simpler, clearer, and sweeter than the urban present."

D. W. Griffith

Methodism is apparent in Griffith's works, because of its more libertarian, democratic approach to the viewer (free will versus predestination, allowing the viewer many points to focus on); because of its impassioned preaching of often prophetic proportions; and because of its musical emphasis, from the orchestra that traveled with Birth of a Nation to the review of Intolerance as "a film fugue." It is claimed that Griffith became a freemason later in life, holding "no strong sectarian beliefs," which is fitting to his populist approach. It is not clear when the change occurred, or if gradually or suddenly. But from start to finish, his more than 400 films reflect a devotion to God, a reverence for Christ, and a concern for the poor and widowed that at least Griffith believed the public believed, if he did not fully believe himself.

Hoping to be a playwright at first, Griffith resorted to acting as an extra in plays. Still focused on the theater after moving out West, Griffith almost accidentally fell into a silent movie directing job with Biograph—a studio specializing in short films—in 1908. Through directing hundreds of one-reelers, Griffith, along with his brilliant cameraman Billy Bitzer, would invent film grammar and soon make landmark films such as A Corner in Wheat (1909), which features intercutting as well as biting social commentary. If Griffith did not invent such techniques as parallel editing, flashbacks, cutting faster to increase tension, thoughtful frame composition, use of close-ups, iris shots, and restrained, more naturalistic film acting, he certainly mastered these techniques early and advanced their uses in a short span of time.

During the next few years, Griffith worked with a stable of actors like Lionel Barrymore, Lillian and Dorothy Gish, and Harry Carey. In Old California (1910) was the first movie ever actually filmed in Hollywood. 1912's Musketeers of Pig Alley is the first mob movie, and here we already see Griffith's attention to lighting, focus, and camera placement to heighten the suspense and drama, but also his concern with the suffering of the poor and the indifference of the rich. Griffith also featured strong female characters, in keeping with the suffragette movement of the day.

After seeing Italy's 1914 Cabiria, Griffith felt America was ready for feature-length movies. He directed Judith of Bethulia the same year, based on the Apocryphal book of Judith, at one hour in length, which depicted the legendary Jewish Mata Hari.

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