Stagestruck Filmmaker: D. W. Griffith and the American TheatreUniversity of Iowa Press, 2009 - 328 páginas An actor, a vaudevillian, and a dramatist before he became a filmmaker, D. W. Griffith used the resources of theatre to great purpose and to great ends. In pioneering the quintessentially modern medium of film from the 1890s to the 1930s, he drew from older, more broadly appealing stage forms of melodrama, comedy, vaudeville, and variety. In Stagestruck Filmmaker, David Mayer brings Griffith’s process vividly to life, offering detailed and valuable insights into the racial, ethnic, class, and gender issues of these transitional decades. Combining the raw materials of theatre, circus, minstrelsy, and dance with the newer visual codes of motion pictures, Griffith became the first acknowledged artist of American film. Birth of a Nation in particular demonstrates the degree to which he was influenced by the racist justifications and distorting interpretations of the Civil War and the Reconstruction era. Moving through the major phases of Griffith’s career in chapters organized around key films or groups of films, Mayer provides a mesmerizing account of the American stage and cinema in the final years of the nineteenth century and the first three decades of the twentieth century. Griffith’s relationship to the theatre was intricate, complex, and enduring. Long recognized as the dominant creative figure of American motion pictures, throughout twenty-six years of making more than five hundred films he pillaged, adapted, reshaped, revitalized, preserved, and extolled. By historicizing his representations of race, ethnicity, and otherness, Mayer places Griffith within an overall template of American life in the years when film rivaled and then surpassed the theatre in popularity. |
Conteúdo
1 | |
1 The Mobile Theatre | 31 |
2 Actor and Playwright | 57 |
3 Griffith at Biograph | 87 |
4 Dramas of Civil War Ethnicity and Race | 120 |
5 The Clansman and The Birth of a Nation | 142 |
6 Eclecticism and Exploration | 166 |
7 Way Down East | 186 |
8 Twilight Revels | 217 |
Notes | 251 |
Playlist | 273 |
Filmography | 277 |
Bibliography | 281 |
295 | |
Outras edições - Ver todos
Stagestruck Filmmaker: D. W. Griffith and the American Theatre David Mayer Prévia não disponível - 2009 |
Termos e frases comuns
action actors actress adaptation African American Anna Anna’s appeared Arvidson audiences Bartlett Farm Belasco Billy Bitzer Biograph films Birth Blanche Sweet Brady Cameron Carol Dempster cast characters Charles circuits Civil War films Civil War stage Clansman comedy comic conventions of Civil D. W. Griffith dance dancers David David Belasco depicts director Dixon’s drama dramatic sketch dramatists East episode female film’s filmmaker fith fith’s Florence Lawrence further Giacometti’s Girl Gish’s Grif Griffith’s film Grismer heroine historians Ibid intertitles Kinemacolor Klan Klaw and Erlanger later Lillian Gish Lottie Blair Parker Louisville Macauley’s melodrama motion pictures narrative Nation novel numerous O’Neil Orphans performance play’s plot popular production Reconstruction reels repertoire role Sanderson scene Schickel screen script sexual South Southern spectator stage melodrama stage play Stoneman studio success theatre theatrical sources Thomas Dixon tion touring Train Robbery Uncle Tom’s Cabin variety vaudeville vaudeville sketch Victorien Sardou villain York