Scott Lord Silent Film: The Girl and Her Trust (D.W. Griffith, Biograph, 1912)

During 1912 actress Dorothy Bernard starred in for director D.W. Griffith at Biograph in the one reel "The Girl and Her Trust". The cinematographer to the film was G. W. Bitzer.

In regard to the grammar of film, shot structure prefiguring, that is to say before, considerations of narrative or mise-en-scene, Kemp R. Niver, in his volume D.W. Griffith, the Biograph films in perspective, writes, "In the space of five years, Griffith progressed from directing 'Adventures of Dollie' with 13 scenes and 12 camera positions to 'The Girl and Her Trust' with 130 scenes photographed from 35 camera positions and the suprising thing is the projection time of both films is about the same." This sentiment is reiterated by Robert M. Henderson in his volume D.W. Griffith, the years at Biograph. "This film is a remake of 'The Lonedale Operator' and a comparison quickly shows how far Griffith's editorial and camera techniques have progressed...Additional shots were made from an automobile riding parallel to the handcar and pursuing the train. These last came to be known as 'tracking' shots."

Author John L. Fell in his volume A History of Films credits D.W. Griffith with using camera movement to follow action in "The Girl snd Her Trust" and "The Lonedale Operator" but finds the 1912 D.W. Griffith film "Beast at Bay" "more impressive" as two moving vehicles are filmed by a third.

Dorothy Bernard went on to film for the Fox Film Corporation, beginning with the 1915 film "The Song of Hate" (seven reels) directed by J. Gordon Edwards.The film is presumed to be a Lost Silent Filmwith no surviving copies.

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Scott Lord Silent Film: Mary Pickford in What The Daisy Said (D.W. Griff...

During 1910 D.W. Griffith directed actress Mary Pickford in the short film "What The Daisy Said" (1910), photographed by G.W. Bitzer for the Biograph Film Company. Peter Cowie, in his volume Eighty Years of Cinema, gives the 1910 film "Simple Charity", directed by Griffith, as one of the earliest on screen appearances made by Mary Pickford.

D.W. Griffith uses offscreen space in his structuring of shots in "What Daisy Said". Most of the shots to the film are exterior longshots with two or more characters from a static camera.

Silent Film Biograph

Scott Lord Silent Film: Lillian Gish in An Unseen Enemy (D.W. Griffith, Biograph 1912)

The year 1912 was to mark the first film with Lillian and Dorothy Gish, “An Unseen Enemy” (one reel), directed by D.W. Griffith for the Biograph Film Company. Lillian and Dorothy Gish appeared in a dozen two reel films together during 1912 and several more during 1913. In The Man Who Invented Hollywood, the autobiography of D.W. Griffith, published in 1972, Griffith outlines his arriving at the Biograph Film Company and adding actors, including Mary Pickford,to his ensemble. Griffith recalls, "One day in the early summer of 1909, I was going through the dingy, old hall of the Biograph studio when suddenly the gloom seemed to disappear. The change was caused by the prescence of two young girls sitting side by side and on a hall bench...They were Lillian Gish and Dorothy Gish. Of the two, Lillian shone with an extremely fragile, ethereal beauty...As for Dorothy, she was lovely too, but in another manner- pert, saucy, the old mischief popping out of her." Actress Lillian Gish, in her autobiography, The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me writes,"Mr. Griffith had rehearsed 'The Unseen Enemy' with other actresses, but after meeting us, he decided we would be suitable for the leads and changed the plot just enough to fit us."

The cinematographer to "An Unseen Enemy" was G.W. Bitzer.
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Lillian and Dorothy Gish Biograph Film Company The Adventures of Dolly: D.W. Griffith for the Biograph Film Company

Scott Lord Silent Film: Linda Arvidson in The Adventures of Dollie (D.W....

Actress Linda Arvidson, writing in the periodcial Film Fun during 1916, includes the "now historic" film "The Advntures of Dollie" (one reel) directed by D.W Griffith for the Biograph Film Companyin 1908. Arvidson wrote under the name Mrs. D.W. Griffith. In one installment she reminisces about travelling to film exterior scenes, claiming they hadn't automobiles yet and visited locations by train or by boat. In a later installment she dicusses her salary for the film, "How much money I made! Twenty eight dollars in two weeks, enough for a whole spring outfit." What is more enjoyable is the autobiography of Mrs. D.W. Griffith, When Movies Were Young, published in 1925. Much of the material from the Film Fun periodical is repeated, worded similarly, as she gives an account of D.W. Griffith the actor being offered a provisional chance to direct his first film, "The Adventures of Dollie", given that he could return to acting if necessary. Mrs. D.W. Griffith exlains Griffith having been accepted as a director for Biograph, "For one year now, those movies so covered with slime and so degraded would have to come first to come first in his thoughts and affections....agonizing days when he would have given his life to be able to chuck the job." She includes not only the studio on East Fourteenth Street but the theaters on Third and Ninth Avenues as places into which one would not be seen going.


Author Edward Wagenkneckt, in his volume The Films of D.W. Griffith, chronicles that 'The Adventures of Dollie", filmed in July of 1908, was the first of 450 films directed by D.W. Griffith for the Biograph Film Company before leaving in September of 1913 all but eleven having been one reelers. The cinematographer to the film was Arthur Marvin. Arthur Marvin also during 1908 photographed the film "Behind the Scenes" for D.W. Griffith, the film having starred Florence Lawrence, Kate Bruce and Gladys Egan.

Lillian Gish, i her autobiography The Mr. Griffith and Me, with writer Ann Pinchot, chronicles that "The Adventures of Dollie" was the film that had begun Griffith's catapult to fame, "Although Billy Bitzer was not the photographer to the film, he helped with the direction...Soon everyone wanted more films by the man who was responsible for 'Dollie' . On the momentum of his first success, he turned out ten more pictures in a month." Lillian Gish quotes G.W. Bitzer in the chapter, but note that Bitzer's autobiography was published four years after Gish's.

Author Roger Manvell, in his sixty page introduction to the anthology "Experiment in the Film" credits "The Adventures of Dollie" as the first film in which D.W. Griffith had used the flashback.

Film historian John L. Fell claimed that the film "gains stregnth from the vertical and diagnal movements of a barrel flaoting down river, over a fallsand to the water's edge with a little girl trapped inside."

Importantly, Robert M. Henderson, in his volume D.W. Griffith: the years at Biograph notes that Griffith using a set up that at the time was standardized, "Each scene was photographed with the camera in a fixed location. The scene was played before the camera as though it were being performed on a stage in medium shot, with the actors always photographed full legnth. There were about twelve scenes in the film, and as was the case for most films in 1908, each scene was a single shot." Peter Cowie, in his volume Eighty Years of Cinema, notes that it was in 1908, in the film "For Love of Gold", that D.W. Griffith had first used the close up shot in film.

Robert Fell, in his volume A History of Film notes that "all but eight" of the films D.W. Griffith made for the Biograph Film Company survived and were available for screening in 1979, virtually removing him from the subject of lost silent film. In regard to my webpage series "Lost Films, Found Magazines", begun at a time when film preservation was unearthing many unseen masterpieces from the silent era, author Tom Gunning, in his volume D.W. Griffith and the origins of American Narrative Film, lends a caution that supports the premise of needing a film history detective while dismissing the perfect accuracy of historiography and the endeavor. "The accounts of Griffith's biograph films given by Lewis Jacobs, George Sandoul and Jean Mitry are filled with descriptions that do not correspond with the actual films. Based primarily on written descriptions rather than on the films themselves, these errors are recycled in textbooks on film history." Gunning cites in particular the autobiography of the wife of D.W. Griffith, Linda Arvidson. According to Gunning, the point of departure used by Lewis Jacobs was primarily the editing that Griffith employed; while looking at Terry Ramsaye and his analysis of shot structure, Gunning adds the phrases "screen grammar" and "pictorial rhetoric" to the familiar "syntax of film narration". "For Sandoul, Griffith's stylistic innovation shattered the theatrical unity of space by introducing the ubiquity of the camera and a unity of action." Gunning also advances the semilogical analysis of Christian Metz as a review of Griffith at Biograph having brought a "liberation of film from theatrical tradition" with the creation of a "film language.", the cinema of attractions bringing new "codified constuctions" to accomadate the cinema of narrative integration, "syntagmas in which individual shots depend on their relation to other shots in the chain for their meaning." Tom Gunning writes, "Dollie's story forms a perfect match with Todorov's "minimal complete plot" although Griffith structures the story through a "spatial as well as narrative circuit". Gunning is referring to the writing of Tzvetan Todorov on narrative equilibrium, progress and resolution who places plot among the elements of narrative, which also include characters, point of view, setting, theme, comflict and style.

Arthur Knight, in his volume The Livliest Art gives one summary of the importance of D.W. Griffith, "He created the art of the film, its language, its syntax. It has often been said that Griffith 'invented' the close-up, that he 'invented' cutting, the camera angle, or the last minute rescues...He refined these elements already present in motion pictures."

John H. Fell, in his volume A History of Film, explains, "In the 1-reelers, Griffith was learning to organize one climax at a time. The story resolutions show sone of Griffith's weakest and some of his most interesting conceptions. He had a predilection for returning audience emotion to the statis of beginnings. Beginnings were appropriately slow. Sometimes a film concludes on the sane scene as it began, framed in longshot."

G.W. Bitzer gives an account of "The Aventures of Dollie", due to its public audience reception, as having had been the film which had secured D.W. Griffith a contract as director with the Biograph Film Companyin 1908, athough the exhibitor's had not predicted it would be a success. He then attributes the earlier film "A Calamitous Elopement" as being the first film he had photographed for Griffith, perhaps an account which supports auteur theory rather than genre in regard to commodification, "With that picture the team of Griffith-Bitzer came into existence."

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Scott Lord Silent Film: Mary Pickford in Lonely Villa (D.W. Griffith, Biograph, 1909)

Linda Arvidson wife of D.W. Griffith, in her autobiography "When the Movies Were Young" claims that "The Lonely Villa" was the second film in which Mary Pickford had appeared, her having made her motion picture debut in the earlier "The Violin Maker of Cerona". Mack Sennett had gleaned the plot to "The Lonely Villa" from a newspaper.

G.W. Bitzer, in his autobiography explains, "James Kirkwood and Mary Pickford made their debut at Biograph records they appeared in 'Her First Biscuits' become we made 'The Loney Villa', in which Mary played the child Marion Leonard and Kirkwood played a robber....She was a marvelous photographer subject and an untiring worker...Mary had a flexible, imaginative mind. A story idea sent her scurring for a scrap of paper to make notes, which she would later turn into scenarios and to the extra paycheck. Among the early successes I knew Mary contributed to were 'The Awakening', 'Caught in the Act', 'Getting Even', 'The Girl of Yesterday', 'The Alien', 'Granny', 'Fates Decree' and the never-to-be-forgotten 'Lena and the Geese'."

In her autobiography, actress Lillian Gish discusses D.W. Griffith's use of shot-length in "The Lonely Villa", describing a sucession of short shots. "As the film nears the climax, each shot becomes shorter. The tempo is thus increased and the suspense heighted. The device, which became known as cross-cutting, became a staple of his directorial repetoire."

Author Stanley J. Solomon, in his volume The Film Idea sees "The Lonely Villa" as only the beginning of the development of new film techniques by D.W. Griffith, almost intimating that there would be a synthesis of Griffith as an autuer and new developments in filmmaking would combine. "Although Griffith was working now with materials that could not be effectively duplicated onstage, 'The Lonely Villa' was not really totally cinematic. Griffith's understanding of spatial relationships was still limited; to get a person from one point to another, Griffith shows him moving there in stages." The passage is particularly refreshing because through it Solomon imparts to us where the title of his volume The Film Idea comes from and how it is his point of departure. He writes,"But Griffith learned quickly that a meaningful narrative must be embedded in a total film idea. Otherwise, when the surface movement is the whole film idea, the camera functions simply as a recording device and most of its expressive possiblilities are relegated to either unimportance or mere technique."

In her volume her volume D.W. Griffith, American film master, Iris Barry sees the film technique used by D. W. Griffith developed quickly during a short period of time, "In The Lonely Villa many scenes begin quietly with the entrance of the characters into the set, significant action follows this slow-paced start only belatedly. In The Lonedale Operator there is no leisurely entrance, the characters are already in mid-action when each shot begins and there is no waste footage- no deliberation in getting on with the story when haste and excitement are what is needed." Barry adds, "At no time did he use a scenario. But there was considerable protest when, quite early in his directorial career, he insisted on retaking unsatisfactory scenes and succedded in gaining permission to do so in The Lonely Villa. Bitzer and others were aghast at his extravagence with film."

Film historian Arthur Knight explains in his volume The Liveliest Art, "the legnth of time a shot remained on the screen could create very real psychological tensions in the audience: the shorter the shot, the greater the excitement. As early as 1909, he introduced this principle to build a climax of suspense in 'The Lonely Villa'....By cutting back and forth, from one to the other, making each shot shorter than the last, Griffith heightened the excitement of the situation."

Robert M. Henderson, in his volume D.W. Griffith, the years at Biograph importantly points out that when D.W. Griffith cuts back during the film it is to reveal different characters, or groups of characters.

Author Tom Gunning, in his volume D.W. Griffith and the Origins of Ammerican Narrative Film points out that D.W. Griffith had brought another innovation to film while at the Biograph Film Company, "The Lonely Villa" was comprised of a total of 52 seperate shots, compared to European film d'art that may have contained under 10. "The suspenseful parallel editing of 'The Lonely Villa' yeilded fifty-two shots from the twelve camera set-ups". The film was photographed by G.W. Bitzer

Adventures of Dollie: D.W. Griffith for the Biograph Film Company D. W. Griffith Biograph Film Company Biograph Film Company

Scott Lord Silent Film: Mary Pickford in The Peach-basket Hat (D.W. Griffith, 1909)

D.W. Griffith The Biograph Film Company

Scott Lord Silent Film: Lillian Gish in Battle of Elderbush Gulch (D.W. Griffith, 1913)

In addition to using closeups to isolate the actor from their diegetic surroundings and the particular background to the action of the scene, which, while viewing the emotion of the character as seperate in turn embeds, or immerses the character into the diegesis, locking and intertwining them into the word within the frame, D. W. Griffith would establish the relationship between character and environment as well through the use of editing and by varying spatial relationships, notably in the silent film "The Battle of Elderbush Gulch" (two reels) through the use of the longshot and the use of interiors.

The two reel film stars actresses Lillian Gish and Mae Marsh and was photographed by G.W. Bitzer for the Biograph Film Company. Edward Wagenknecht, in his volume The Films of D.W. Griffith writes of a film including a subplot which divides itself, "The Battle of Elderbush Gulch is one of the most complex Biograph films. This is fascilitated by the fact that it is in two reels, although Griffith had previously attempted similarly constructed films with a main narrative supported by subsidiary threads in one reel ABS (eg. Home Folks)....The use of parallel action is put to use here with more effect and extraordinary dexterity than before in part due to the film's elaborate construction."

The cameraman to "The Battle of Elderbush" was G.W. Bitzer. Silent Film

Silent Film Biograph Film Company

Scott Lord Silent Film: Blanche Sweet in The Painted Lady (D.W. Griffith, Biograph, 1912)

Directed by D.W. Griffith for the Biograph Film Company during 1912, "The Painted Lady" starred actresses Blanche Sweet, Madge Kirby and Kate Bruce. The cinematographer to the film was G.W. Bitzer.

Silent Film D.W. Griffith Biograph Film Company

Scott Lord Silent Film: Blanche Sweet in The Lesser Evil (D.W. Griffith, Biograph, 1912)

The Lesser of Evil starred actresses Blanche Sweet and Mae Marsh and was directed for Biograph by D.W. Griffithduring 1912. The film was photographed by G.W. Bitzer. Silent Film Biograph Film Company

Scott Lord Silent Film: Mary Pickford in Lena and the geese (D.W. Griffith, Biograph, 1912)

During 1912 Mary Pickford, Kate Bruce and Mae Marsh starred for D.w. Griffith at Biograph in the one-reel "Lena and the Geese". The cinematographer of the film was G.W. Bitzer.

In her autobiography, The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me, actress Lillian Gish gives an account of seeing the film recalls having viewed the film with her sister Dorothy and unexpectedly gaving recognized their friend Mary Pickford, then Gladys Smith. "What a satisfying film it was calculated to move the heart and encourage the tear ducts."

Silent Film D.W. Griffith Biograph Film Company

Scott Lord Silent Film: Blanche Sweet in The Lonedale Operator (D.W. Griffith, 1912)

In her autobiography, Lillian Gish discusses D.W. Griffith's cutting between camera distances in "The Lonedale Operator" (one reel). The photoplay was written by Mack Sennett and photographed by G.W. Bitzer for the Biograph Film Company durin 1912. Linda Arvidson, writing as Mrs. D. W. Griffith, in her autobiography entitled "When the Movies Were Young" recounts the importance of "The Lonedale Operator" to the career of actress Blanche Sweet, "Mr. Griffith, as of yet unwilling to grant that she had any soul or feeling in her work, was using her for 'girl' parts. But he changed his opinion with 'The Lonedale Operator'. That was the picture in which he first recognized ability in Miss Sweet." Arvidson later phrases it as "screen acting that could be recognized as a portrayal of human conduct". In another account contained in the volume, Arvidson chronicles D.W. Griffith having met with Blanche Sweet "on the road" with an offer to film two reelers in Calfornia neccesitated by the departure of Mary Pickford to the IMP Studios.

The account Lillian Gish gives of the "Lonedale Operator" in her autobiography The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me includes D.W. Griffith being preemptive of his film's editor, "he refined the devices for building suspense...To increase suspense and build up to the climax, Mr. Griffith again employed crosscutting, switching from the girl to the sweetheart in evershortening intervals."
Arthur Knight, in his volume The Liveliest Art, describes Griffith's use of the insert shot in "The Lonedale Operator" when Blanche Sweet uses a wrench that is thought to be a pistol. "It was the close up that let us in on the secret, when the director was ready to reveal it. Griffith discovered that one basic function of the close up was to emphasize the inanimate, to make tings a dynamic part of the world through which the actors move. But the close up does more than emphasize what is in a scene, it elimantes everything else."

Magazine advertisements paid for by the Biograph Film Company described "The Londale Operator", reading: "With this Biograph subject is presented without a doubt the most thrilling melodramatic story ever produced." Silent Film

D.W. Griffith

Biograph Film Company

Scott Lord Silent Film: Mary Pickford in An Arcadian Maid (D.W. Griffith, Biograph Film Company, 1910)

Directed in by D.W. Griffith for the Biograph Film Company with locations in New Jersey, "An Arcadian Maid" starred Mary Pickford, Kate Bruce and Mack Sennet.

Scott Lord Silent Film: Mary Pickford in The New York Hat (D.W. Griffith, Biograph)

Directed by D. W. Griffith for the Biograph Film Company the film features the first photoplay written by Anita Loos. Subsequently, Loos was to write the scenarios and screenplays to films which starred Douglas Fairbanks. The New Movie Magazine during 1930 nostalgically related that the film had also introduced Lionel Barrymore to the screen and that Loos, who had only been sixteen years old at the time of its release, had received “the large sum of $15” for writing the film. Author Iris Barry explains that it was not only Anita Loos that was behind the scenes, “At this period, ideas for films were commonly bought from outsiders and members of the company alike. Mary Pickford, Mack Sennett and others contributed many of the plots Griffith used.” This in part can be taken into consideration when apply Autuer theory to the abrupt difference between the scriptwriting methods of D.W Griffith and Thomas Ince and when reconsidering autuer theory when comparing the directorial efforts of D.W. Griffith and Ingmar Bergman in the mileau of a theatrical acting company.
In the volume D.W. Griffith, American Filmaker, Iris Barry writes that 1912 was a year that D.W. Griffith was an innovator not only in the depiction of social themes and social problems but also in film technique and the uses of the camera as well as the legnthening of the onscreen running time of the two reeler. Barry describes the filmmaking involved in “The New York Hat” (one reel),The film uses cut-backs, close-shots and sharply edited scenes with ease and mastery: close-ups made acting a matter of expresssion and minute guestures instead of the stereotyped guestures of the popular theater.” Peter Cowie, in his volume Eighty Years of Cinema, writes, "Close ups already predominate this film."
In the short scenes of Griffith’s film, Mary Pickford is shown to the right of the screen in medium close shot, trying on a hat, her hands and elbows shown in the frame. Griffith cuts on the action of her leaving the frame to exterior shots. In a later scene, Griffith positions her to the left of the screen, and, his already having shown time having elapsed between the two scenes, then brings the action back to the right of the screen frame. As an early reversal of screen direction, or screen positioning, there is the use of screen editing in between the complimentary positions of showing her in the same interior. During the film the actress is, almost referentially, often kept in profile, facing to the right of the screen's frame. Although Griffith may have been still developing editing techniques, it has been noted that the acting style in the film can be seen as an example of a more naturalistic and less histrionic acting style than that of other contemporary films.

The cinematographer to "The New York Hat" was G.W. Bitzer.
Silent Film D.W. Griffith Biograph Film Company

Scott Lord Silent Film: Mary Pickford in The Broken Locket (D.W. Griffit...

Both Mary Pickford and Lottie Pickford appear in the one reel film "The Broken Locket", directed by D.W. Griffith and photographed by G.W. Bitzer. Silent Film D.W. Griffith Biograph Film Company

Scott Lord Silent Film: 1776 or The Hessian Renegades

D.W. Griffith directed the Revolutionary War film "1776 or the Hessian Renedgades" during 1909. Director D.W. Griffith appears on screen in the film with wife, Linda Arvidson, Kate Bruce, Florence Lawrence, Marion Keonard, Lottie Pickford and Mary Pickford. The film was photographed by cinematographers G.W. Bitzer and Arthur Marvin. America directed by D.W. Griffith

Scott Lord Silent Film: Mary Pickford in The Mender of Nets (Biograph Film Company, D.W. Griffith, 1912)

During 1912 D.W. Griffith directed Mary Pickford, Mabel Normand and Maugeritte Marsh in "The Mender of Nets", photographed by . "The Mender of Nets" was the first film in which Mary Pickford had appeared at the studios of the Biograph Film Company. "The Mender of Nets" was photographed by G.W. Bitzer.

Although it seems the director of the lost silent film "Honor Thy Father" in which Mary Pickford starred for the Majestic Motion Picture Company during 1912 with Owen Moore, is unknown, Moore starred with Pickford in several of her films of the period that are now lost, with no surviving copies, the name of their directors also presently unknown. Before 1912 she had previously starred under the direction of Thomas Ince at Independent Motion Picture Company, where she appeared in twenty eight films that are now presumed lost, with no surviving copies existing, and at Majestic Studios, where four out if the five films that she appeared in are presumed to be presently lost. Among the one reel lost silent films that Mary Pickford made in 1910 were "Back to the Soil", "The Fishermaid" (Thomas Ince), "For Her Brother's Sake" and "For the Queen's Honor".

Biograph Film Company
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Scott Lord Silent Film: Sunbeam (Griffith, Biograph, 1913)

Directed by D.W.Griffith and photograped by G.W. Bitzer in 1912, "Sunbeam" featured the talents of actress Kate Bruce.

Silent Film D.W. Griffith Biograph Film Company

Scott Lord Silent Film: Mary Pickford in A Strange Meeting (D.W. Griffith, Biograph, 1909)

"A Strange Meeting", directed by D. W. Griffith for the Biograph Company during 1909 starred actress Stephanie Longfellow, Kate Bruce, Mary Pickford and Lottie Pickford. The cameraman to "A Strange Meeting" was G.W. Bitzer. Silent Film D.W. Griffith Biograph Film Company

Scott Lord Silent Film: Mary Pickford in The Old Actor (D.W.Griffith, Biograph 1912)

"The Old Actor" (two reels) was directed by D.W. Griffith for the Biograph Film Company during 1912and was photographed by G.W.Bitzer with a scenario by George Hennessy. The film stars Mary Pickford with Kate Bruce. Silent Film Silent Film

Scott Lord Silent Film: Mary Pickford in The Unchanging Sea (Griffith, 1...

D.W. Griffith directed his wife, Linda Arvidson, and actress Mary Pickford in "The Unchanging Sea" (one reel) for the Biograph Film Companyduring 1910. Actresses Kate Bruce and Gkadys Egan also appear on screen. The film was adapted from a poem by Charles Kingsley and photographed by G.W. Bitzer. G.W. Bitzer, in his autobiography Billy Bitzer, his own story, relates an account of the Biograph Film Company having arrived in Hollywood during 1910 and its subsequent use of Californian outdoor locations. "On the lot we constructed a large wooden platform and covered the area with white cotton sheets, so that we could adjust the amount of sunlight for the camera." Silent Film D.W. Griffith Biograph Film Company