Lillian Diana Gish www.lilliangish1893.com

  THE “I” OF THE CAMERA – True Heart Susie by William Rothman (1988) Essays in Film Criticism, History, and Aesthetics William Rothman © Cambridge University Press 1988 True Heart Griffith After D. W. Griffith broke with the American Biograph Company over his wish to release Judith of Bethulia as a feature-length film, his output was divided between large-scale epics and more unassuming productions that show him in a different and in many ways more appealing light (although Griffith’s greatest films, such as The Birth of a Nation, succeed as intimate dramas as well as epics). Of these deceptively modest films. True Heart Susie (1919) and the more famous Broken Blossoms, made in the same year, are the most charming, the most assured, and the most lovable. True Heart Susie is also one of Griffith’s most prophetic meditations on the medium of film. True Heart Susie Susie (Lillian Gish) grows up in the small town of Pine Grove. (The film calls this Indiana, but who could doubt that Griffit

  THE “I” OF THE CAMERA – Judith of Bethulia (1913) – by William Rothman Essays in Film Criticism, History, and Aesthetics William Rothman © Cambridge University Press 1988 Judith of Bethulia (1913) was D. W. Griffith’s first feature-length film. Griffith devoted extraordinary energy and attention to its making. Indeed, he broke irrevocably with the Biograph management, for whom he had directed over five hundred short films, by his refusal to shorten it or to release it as two separate two-reelers. The last film of Griffith’s long and productive association with Biograph, it remained, in his own estimation, one of his very best films. Everything points to the conclusion that Judith of Bethulia is a key film in Griffith’s career. Indeed, it is a film of considerable compositional complexity, thematic directness, and cinematic artistry. In addition, it highlights a fundamental strain in Griffith’s filmmaking, perhaps carrying it to the furthest extreme of any of his films. Thus, Judith o