Virtual Exhibitions > D.W. Griffith and the origins of American Cinema

The Critical Response to D.W. Griffith's Work

D.W. Griffith's important achievements were recognised in the work of film historians writing in the 1920s and 1930s. The Museum of Modern Art in New York City (MOMA) staged a retrospective exhibition in 1940 and Iris Barry wrote an important monograph on Griffith to coincide with the exhibition, hailing Griffith as 'one of the greatest and most original artists of our time'. The recognition of Griffith's work initiated by film historians and by the MOMA retrospective has continued to this day, though early cinema scholars have increasingly sought to site Griffith's work in industrial, social and political contexts, drawing attention to the techniques that Griffith shared with contemporaneous directors and in turn probing the ideological parameters of Griffith's work. The Birth of a Nation has been central here. Indeed, the Directors Guild of America withdrew its D.W. Griffith award in 2000 because of political concerns about the film and its portrayal of 'intolerable racist stereotypes'. Griffith's role in the birth of American cinema is thus deeply controversial, linked on the one hand to a set of formal and industrial issues but also inextricably enmeshed with a series of political questions about representation.

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