Griffith's privileged moments are still among the most beautiful in all cinema. They belong to him alone, since they are beyond mere technique. Griffith invented this "mere" technique, but he also transcended it.
-- Andrew Sarris
While I was watching this documentary I wondered for whom it was made: if one has seen Griffith's films there was nothing new and if one had not could these excerpts and talking heads convince one to do so? There is nothing like seeing Griffith's films in original nitrate prints, projected by a variable-speed projector and accompanied by live music, all of which I was able to do in 1975 when The Museum of Modern Art showed all of Griffith's work on the 100th anniversary of his birth. One can only hope that MoMA might do this again in 2025, the 150th anniversary. Meanwhile a number of Griffith's films are available on Netflix, as long as one realizes that one is only seeing an approximation of what the films actually look like. There was a point in film history when classical films had absorbed all of Griffith's techniques and his films seemed to some "old-fashioned," but most current films are lacking both in technique and emotion and look as if D.W. Griffith had never lived.
Whether one has seen Griffith's films -- my favorites are True-Heart Susie for its intimacy and subtlety and Intolerance for it epic quality and brilliant editing -- or plans to see them I suggest one read the essay on Griffith in Andrew Sarris's The American Cinema (1968) and the perceptive chapters on Griffith in Kevin Brownlow's The Parade's Gone By (1968).
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