D. W. Griffith, January 22, 1875–July 23, 1948
3,520 words
Silent film pioneer David Wark Griffith, a native Kentuckian of Anglo-Welsh descent called by Jewish film historian Ephraim Katz “The single most important figure in the history of American film, and one of the most influential in the development of world cinema as an art,” has long been lionized in racialist circles as pro-white because of his classic The Birth of a Nation (1915). Left-wing critics, in turn, project a lurid image of the director as a sort of satanic “racist.”
I watched a number of Griffith films, including several of his early shorts, to gauge for myself how well the ideological consensus accords with fact. (more…)