Here's a question for Griffith defenders and detractors alike.  As a

junior faculty member, I have had to teach our survey course in World Film

History and no doubt will have to again sometime; as someone with limited

interest in the formal aspects of film, I find teaching a text as racist

as _Birth of a Nation_, its formidable formal achievements

notwithstanding, unconscionable; as someone trained in cultural history, I

am deeply suspicious of the claims to its *uniqueness* as a formal

achievement, which is usually the apology offered for teaching it in spite

of its vile content; and, again as a cultural historian, I recoil

reflexively from the great-man vision of history implicit in the

valorization of Griffith.  The problem is that Griffith's period is not my

area of expertise, so I ask you:  what other films could give students a

sense of the development of classical narrative in the mid-teens without

subjecting them to Klan propoganda?  Is there anything by Ince that might

do the job?  (In fact, is there anything by Ince on video?)  My syllabus

and I thank you in advance.

 

JRG

 

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John R. Groch <[log in to unmask]>            |  "Work!  FINISH!  THEN sleep."

English Department/Film Studies Program    |     -- The Monster,

Univ. of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260  |        "Bride of Frankenstein"

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