On Construction of Griffith’s Films Backdrop Blur
On Construction of Griffith’s Films Poster
Germany
NR 0h 9m

On Construction of Griffith’s Films

In On Construction of Griffith' Films we picked a sequence from Griffith Intolerance (1916). It shows a dialogue between a man and a woman, filmed and edited as shot and counter shot. We reproduce the shot on two monitors to reveal its narrative character and also because analysis requires us to dissect something. The narrative form of shot / counter shot, which would later become the norm for depicting dialogue in film, remains novel here. A few years earlier Griffith had still used tracking shots to tell his stories. In The Lonedale Operator (1911), cuts were made only when the scene changed; a cut in the movie's story line. In Intolerance, cinematography had already achieved such a level of independence that it was the camera that constituted a room with it's detail. -Harun Farocki

Watch Now

Top Cast

Overview

In On Construction of Griffith' Films we picked a sequence from Griffith Intolerance (1916). It shows a dialogue between a man and a woman, filmed and edited as shot and counter shot. We reproduce the shot on two monitors to reveal its narrative character and also because analysis requires us to dissect something. The narrative form of shot / counter shot, which would later become the norm for depicting dialogue in film, remains novel here. A few years earlier Griffith had still used tracking shots to tell his stories. In The Lonedale Operator (1911), cuts were made only when the scene changed; a cut in the movie's story line. In Intolerance, cinematography had already achieved such a level of independence that it was the camera that constituted a room with it's detail. -Harun Farocki

Rating

NR / 10
0 Reviews
0 Popular

Recommendations

Night Will Fall

When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".

Night Will Fall

7.6 2014