They weren't working in a vacuum and neither are we. I am on a path whether I want to be or not. It's hard to go forward without knowing where you're coming from. All of the visual language that we understand today without even knowing that we know it was either developed or exploited by the people who came before.
We watched a bit of and talked about Birth of a Nation this morning in class. DW Griffith had made at least one feature before this and something like 450 shorts. Shorts were the most common thing in the theaters at the time so it's not like now where you're not professional if you're only making shorts. He was using all those shorts to experiment and try new things. Because everything was new then. And then he combined all that he learned from those experiments into this masterwork that is important for that fact alone. But then we have this dilemma that what he did with it was make hate speech. We talked about that problem; no one wants to give importance to hate speech. In fact even at the time there was backlash to such an extent that he had to re-edit it. It's the recut version that we watch today which makes me think OMG how much worse was it?!?
It was important though because it was influential on that path from where film began to where we are today. He was also working in the context of all of his contemporaries and all who came before. He wasn't the first or only person to do any of the individual things he did. He just did it well and became famous for it. He was watching other people's films, he was learning from them and being inspired by them. Mostly his contemporaries because film wasn't that old yet. He could only build upon 20 years. We can build on 120. And so we should build upon them all and not just the last few decades.
One of the things we learned today was that Griffith's changing use of camera allowed for a changing acting style. Actors could actually act an not just move around in big gestures. Acting became more subtle, less melodramatic even while the stories were every bit as melodramatic. If you watched it by itself you'd think ... um... no. But if you watch it in comparison to Porter's Great Train Robbery from 10 years earlier you'd realize ...um...yes. But then today we also watched Buster Keaton's The General from 1927. And while that is a very physical comedy it is still leaps and bounds more subtle in acting than Birth of a Nation was.
And interestingly that all ties into the exercises we were doing in acting class yesterday. 2 people face each other with a chair in between them. Person 2 has to cross to Person 1 but there is a landmine on one side of the chair. From a flip of a coin only Person 1 knows which side. They aren't allowed to make any movement or gesture they are only allowed to know which side is safe. Person 2 shifts from side to side until they think they know and then they step forward. Everyone got a turn and everyone managed to step safely. Of course later we did a scene and managed to forget everything we'd learned about subtle. But it was the first thing I thought of watching Buster Keaton this morning.
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