D.W. Griffith: The Cinema Genius Who Birthed a Tragedy

Imagine inventing the printing press, then using your first major demonstration to print a piece of destructive propaganda. That is the paradox of D.W. Griffith, the man who invented the visual language of modern cinema and then weaponized it for one of the most damaging films ever made.This episode tracks Griffith from a broke Kentucky kid and failed playwright to the director Charlie Chaplin called 'the teacher of us all.' We examine how he pioneered cross-cutting and close-ups, then attached those revolutionary tools to The Birth of a Nation, a film that helped revive the KKK and ultimately got his name stripped from the industry's highest honor.How he borrowed cross-cutting from Charles Dickens' novel structureThe bizarre belief that films over 15 minutes would physically hurt audiences' eyesThe Birth of a Nation, the Dunning School, and the riots and protests it sparkedHow the colossal failure of Intolerance bankrupted him via the costly roadshow modelHis tragic decline, hiding behind set scenery, and the 1999 DGA decision to remove his name