The Great Director (1966)
*** (out of 4)
This BBC documentary takes a look at the life and career of D.W. Griffith who is considered the father of film. The documentary starts off talking about how he got a job at Biograph and how over time he would do well over four-hundred movies including THE BIRTH OF A NATION and INTOLERANCE. There's no question that Kevin Brownlow's D.W. GRIFFITH: FATHER OF FILM is a much better and much more detailed documentary but one must really consider when this was made. In 1966 there certainly weren't too many documentaries about directors so this one here is pretty rare and for the most part it's fun. At just 51-minutes the movie isn't able to cover everything Griffith did but I think it does a very good job at showing what made his films so great. Through film clips we see as Griffith's projects continued to get bigger and bigger before he finally decided to settle down and do "small" pictures. We also see his downfall as the director simply didn't change with the times and soon people wanted to see movies with Clara Bow and not a virgin living on a farm. We get clips from his two epics as well as HEARTS OF THE WORLD, ABRAHAM LINCOLN and THE GIRL WHO STAYED AT HOME. Fans of Griffith will want to check this out as it's a good film and we get interviews with both Lillian Gish and Erich von Stroheim.
