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It’s a CineSavant guest reviewer debut for journalist Sergio Alejandro Mims. In its first ever 2-disc set Twilight Time makes a bold statement with a domestic release of an important U.K. restoration. It’s without question extremely influential as filmmaking — techniques used in The Avengers: Infinity War can be traced back to D.W. Griffith’s classic. But this controversial picture is also one of the most vile, racist movies ever made. It has a lot of answer for, yet still makes an impact today. What other film released over a century ago can make that statement?

The Birth of a Nation

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1915 / Color tinted / 1:33 flat full frame / 191 min. / Street Date May 22, 2018 /Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store /

Starring: Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Henry B. Walthall, Ralph Lewis, George Siegman Walter Long, Joseph Henabery Jennie Lee, Mary Alden.

Cinematography: G.W. Bitzer

Film Editors: D.W.

With a new film entitled The Birth of a Nation in cinemas, we may expect to hear more about D.W. Griffith, whose 1915 version stands as both a crowning glory and a primal sin of the early American film. The period of Griffith's career least discussed is the late silent era, when he was falling from both independence and preeminence and was forced to take work he might otherwise have looked down on. Nevertheless, his restless creativity sometimes found expression in what he probably saw as potboilers.Battle of the Sexes starts as a Jazz Age comedy in which flapper-vamp Phyllis Haver and her "jazz hound" lover Don Alvarado conspire to seduce (her department) and fleece (his specialty) a wealthy businessman (Jean Hersholt). Griffith sets up the good bourgeoise's family home with all the sentimentality one might expect from his Victorian sensibility, but unexpectedly finds far more fun in the bad guys.

A long time ago, sometime around 1912, a director by the name of D.W. Griffith packed up his filmmaking wares and took his crew, including favored cinematographer Billy Bitzer and star Mae Marsh, across the water to a relatively mysterious island off the Southern California coast to shoot a short film. The project, Man’s Genesis, subtitled A Psychological Comedy Founded upon the Darwinian Theory of the Evolution of Man (Is that Woody Allen I hear whimpering with envy?), isn’t one for which Griffith is well remembered, in the hearts of either academics or those given to silent-era nostalgia. (One comment on IMDb suggests that no one would ever mistake Griffith’s simple tale of a landmark of human development—man discovers his ability to craft and use tools in order to achieve a specific goal-- for “a serious work of speculative anthropology” and wonders “what the director and his...

Stumbling across that list of best-edited films yesterday had me assuming that there might be other nuggets like that out there, and sure enough, there is American Cinematographer's poll of the American Society of Cinematographers membership for the best-shot films ever, which I do recall hearing about at the time. But they did things a little differently. Basically, in 1998, cinematographers were asked for their top picks in two eras: films from 1894-1949 (or the dawn of cinema through the classic era), and then 1950-1997, for a top 50 in each case. Then they followed up 10 years later with another poll focused on the films between 1998 and 2008. Unlike the editors' list, though, ties run absolutely rampant here and allow for way more than 50 films in each era to be cited. I'd love to see what these lists would look like combined, however. I imagine "Citizen Kane," which was on top of the 1894-1949 list,...

D.W. Griffith movies at the American Cinematheque (photo: D.W. Griffith circa 1915) A series of D.W. Griffith movies made at Biograph at the dawn of both the 20th century and the art of moviemaking will be screened at the American Cinematheque next weekend. "Retroformat Presents: D.W. Griffith at Biograph, Part 3 - 1909 – 1910" will take place on Saturday, April 26, 2014, at 7:30 p.m. in the Steven Spielberg auditorium of The Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. The evening will be hosted by Tom Barnes; musical accompaniment will be provided by Cliff Retallick. Among the D.W. Griffith films to be presented by Retroformat are the following: Lines of White on a Sullen Sea The Gibson Goddess The Mountaineer’s Honor Through the Breakers A Corner in Wheat Her Terrible Ordeal The Last Deal Faithful D.W. Griffith and his stars As found in Retroformat’s press release, those early D.W. Griffith efforts feature "innovative cinematography" by frequent Griffith collaborator G.W. Bitzer,...

In Robert Wiene’s 1920 dreamlike horror classic, veteran German actor Werner Krauss plays the mysterious Dr. Caligari, the apparent force behind a creepy somnambulist named Cesare and played by Conrad Veidt, who abducts beautiful Lil Dagover. The finale in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari has inspired tons of movies and television shows, from Fritz Lang's 1944 film noir The Woman in the Window to the last episode of the TV series St. Elsewhere. In addition, the film shares some key elements in common (suppposedly as a result of a mere coincidence) with Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio's 2011 thriller Shutter Island. The 1920 crime melodrama Outside the Law is not in any way related to Rachid Bouchareb's 2010 political drama. Instead, the Tod Browning-directed movie is a well-made entry in the gangster genre (long before the explosion a decade later). Browning, best known for his early '30s efforts Dracula and Freaks,...

Everybody's favorite movie decade: Which ones are the best movies released in the 20th century's second decade? Best Film (Pictured above) Broken Blossoms: Barthelmess and Gish star as ill-fated lovers in D.W. Griffith’s romantic melodrama featuring interethnic love. Check These Out (Pictured below) Cabiria: is considered one of the major landmarks in motion picture history, having inspired the scope and visual grandeur of D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance. Also of note, Pastrone's epic of ancient Rome introduced Maciste, a bulky hero who would be featured in countless movies in the ensuing decades. Best Actor (Pictured below) In the tragic The Italian, George Beban plays an Italian immigrant recently arrived in the United States (Click below for film review). Unfortunately, his American dream quickly becomes a horrendous nightmare of poverty and despair. Best Actress (Pictured below) The movies' super-vamp Theda Bara in A Fool There Was: A little...

Pete Hammond reports that the Weinstein Company has sent French Oscar hopeful "The Intouchables" to Academy members: "Every Oscar season the race is on to see who can put out the first DVD screener sent to Academy members. Well, the race is over for 2012: The Weinstein Company is mailing screeners today of their hit French import 'The Intouchables' to the entire membership of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association got one over the weekend ... Millennium mailed a commercial DVD of 'Bernie' to press a couple of weeks ago with Oscar aspirations attached, but this is the first official manufactured screener for Oscar voters (the Academy has strict rules about packaging and does not allow commercial DVDs to be sent to members)." Deadline International Cinematographers Guild announce Billy Bitzer Award honorees. From the press release: "The International Cinematographers Guild’s...

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has acquired more than 70,000 photographs from the Bison Archives, the private collection of renowned film historian Marc Wanamaker, Academy COO Ric Robertson announced today. The images document nearly every facet of film production between 1909 and the present day, focusing on the first half of the 20th century. Many of these images are the only known photographs of their subjects, including a group of eight behind-the-scenes color images of the filming of the opening sequence of Orson Welles's 1958 noir classic, “Touch of Evil.”

“Marc's dedication to preserving a historic photographic record of our industry has resulted in an extraordinary collection,” said Robertson. “We're honored to add these images to our to our library's holdings. His photographs, so many of which focus on behind-the-scenes studio activities, combined with the existing Herrick photographs, will provide unequalled coverage on all aspects of Hollywood filmmaking.

With Georges Méliès as its subject, Martin Scorsese's Hugo – up for 11 Oscars – is a film that gives meaning to the cliché 'the magic of the movies'

Should you stay up for the Oscars, here's a surefire way to be hammered by the end: pour yourself a drink each time you hear the word "magic", and you'll be watching the winner's tearful acceptance speech in an alcoholic haze.

Is there a phrase more hackneyed than "the magic of the movies"? From the moment of their invention at the end of the 19th century, motion pictures have been perceived as simultaneously hyper natural and supernatural. The first films of the Lumiére brothers were simple recordings ("actualities") that established the photographic basis of the medium; those produced by the stage magician Georges Méliès, the subject of Martin Scorsese's impressive 3D spectacle Hugo, were fantastic and predicated on special effects – namely stop-motion,...

Gordon Willis is the best cinematographer America ever produced. There. I said it. If he'd only shot the Godfather trilogy, Manhattan, Zelig and All the President's Men (let alone Pennies From Heaven, Interiors, Klute and Broadway Danny Rose), he'd have at least earned consideration among the greats like Gregg Toland and Billy Bitzer and his Oscar-winning contemporaries Conrad Hall and Haskell Wexler. And very few would argue against Willis being the best American cinematographer to never win an Oscar -- until tomorrow, that is, when Willis will join Roger Corman as a recipient of a long, long over lifetime-achievement Academy Award. In a series of clips after the jump, see some of what the Academy missed (and is finally making up for) all these years.

The International Cinematographers Guild has released a list of the most influential cinematographers in the history of motion pictures. Directors of photography topping the ICG's list, which became a top 11 list because of a tie, are Billy Bitzer, Jordan Cronenweth, Conrad L. Hall, James Wong Howe, Sven Nykvist, Vittorio Storaro, Gregg Toland, Haskell Wexler, Gordon Willis, Freddie Young and Vilmos Zsigmond. "We didn't ask our members to select the most talented or creative cinematographers because that would be like asking artists to choose between Dali and Rembrandt," ICG national president George Spiro Dibie said. "We invited them to choose the cinematographers who have done the most to influence the art form."...