HOLLYWOOD in The Twenties (1968) by David Robinson
HOLLYWOOD in The Twenties (1968) by David Robinson David Wark Llewelyn Griffith … HOLLYWOOD in The Twenties (1968) by David Robinson Between 1908 and 1914 Griffith gave the cinema its syntax practically complete. He developed Porter’s innovation of cross-cutting. He introduced cutting within the scene as a standard practice. He introduced realistic and expressive lighting. He used masks and irises to make the very shape of the screen an instrument for dramatic expression. He increased the range of the camera’s vision —used close-ups, which enabled actors to work more subtly and detail to be more immediately revealing, and long-shots which emancipated the film from the stall’s-eye view of earlier cinema drama. He released the screen image from a simply two-dimensional movement and gave it perspective, foreground and background. He used the moving camera (actually a familiar, if disorganised device from the earliest days) for dramatic purposes. From the theatre he...