Family Secrets: The Feature Films of D.W. Griffith

The Macmillan International Film Encyclopedia describes D.W. Griffith (1875‐1948) as “the single most important figure in the history of American film” (Katz, 1998). Michael Allen’s book suggests that Griffith’s vast reputation rests mainly on the technical achievement of early short films he made for the Biograph company and two famous epic productions, The Birth of A Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916). Griffith continued to make films until 1931, but with a handful of exceptions his later films have tended to be neglected by film critics and scholars or seen as regressive or even as embarrassingly incompetent failures.

Family Secrets has...