Search Details

Word: griffith (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first (reverse)


Usage:

...RARELY sees completely integrated films, works whose every element contributes to a single expression. Few directors reach the maturity and control necessary to such a work. Sorrows of Satan (1927) finds Griffith once more transcending himself, leaving behind the formal means by which he ordered his earlier dramas for a simpler, more direct style. Sorrows is so unified that its mood and meaning can be assigned to no single aspect of that style...

Author: By Mike Prokosch, | Title: The Moviegoer Sorrows of Satan | 12/12/1969 | See Source »

...film's every turn and nuance is heightened, given immediate meaning for the character involved, as much by its understated acting as by its simple shooting style. Carol Dempster has come far from the frolics she and Lillian Gish gave Griffith's films of the earlier twenties. And Adolphe Menjou, as Satan, is the model of restraint. For him a grimace or devilish leer would be an unspeakable faux pas. But Griffith, far from leaving him a polished gentleman without depth of character, makes his slightest gestures personally significant. Menjou is eating dinner with Ricardo Cortez in the grandest...

Author: By Mike Prokosch, | Title: The Moviegoer Sorrows of Satan | 12/12/1969 | See Source »

...action of the whole film is so restrained that secondary characters are almost completely absent; Sorrows is simply about the emotional progress of two people. Nevertheless the rare actions of people other than the principals illuminate the situation of the principals without seeming to be bits of business Griffith picked to reveal the central relation of the film. After Cortez has bought his wife-to-be a cup and saucer they stand outside a pawnshop, facing the camera, admiring the cup. A woman comes up to them, takes a look at it, and passes off to one side. We never...

Author: By Mike Prokosch, | Title: The Moviegoer Sorrows of Satan | 12/12/1969 | See Source »

...GRIFFITH'S restraint, simplicity, and economy of means pay off in increased dramatic force for every action. There's less detail, but it's all out front, working directly on us. His control of secondary incidents is complete: one gasps when a man with dark glasses simply appears at Cortez's wedding and stands in front of Dempster. Our terror increases when in close-ups, her face is partly blocked by the edge of his sleeve...

Author: By Mike Prokosch, | Title: The Moviegoer Sorrows of Satan | 12/12/1969 | See Source »

...such terror we recognize the power of each simple detail, the seriousness of all the beautiful things happening before our eyes. Sorrows is no sweet moralistic drama. The moral unity it maintains is the most complex of artistic attitudes. Satan, for example, is no villain. Indeed, Griffith discarded villains after America (1924). The men who rob the hero and heroine of Isn't Life Wonderful are driven to their crime by hunger and, like the two leads, by marital love. They are as human, as noble, as anyone else. Satan goes through more intense emotional crises even than the deserted...

Author: By Mike Prokosch, | Title: The Moviegoer Sorrows of Satan | 12/12/1969 | See Source »

| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | Next