Movies: The Directors and the Pictures

The First Great Directors.

Despite the rise of the star system, the 1910s were without question a decade of great movie directors. Directors made the stars, and the most influential were given their own studios and free rein over the creative aspects of their pictures; most also became producers. The greatest of all was D. W. Griffith, who made more than four hundred short films for Biograph between 1908 and 1913 before turning his attention to the feature films that would make him famous. In The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916), both twelve reels long, Griffith pioneered the techniques of close-ups, cross-cutting, and flashbacks; raised the standards for sets and action in films; and made stars of Lillian Gish and Mae Marsh. Another great director who got his start during the 1910s was Cecil B. DeMille, whose films for Jesse Lasky—including Joan, the Woman (1917) and Male and...

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