Century Film Project

Worldcat Link: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/75385630

This collection of ten early Griffith shorts (“one-reelers,” generally between ten and fifteen minutes each) by Grapevine Video is given minimal packaging and features, probably with the intention of keeping the price low for the (mostly) academic institutions that were seen as its audience. It is part of a series of ten discs that focus on the Biograph Company, including five others that specifically deal with Griffith’s work. There is no overlap with D. W. Griffith Years of Discovery: 1909-1913 on this disc, so you can watch them together to get a wider appreciation of Griffith’s work. The prints on this disc are unrestored and of fairly low quality, and the music seems to have been selected from a library without much effort to match cues to the picture. As with the other collection, they are mostly melodramas with a few domestic comedies, every one is shot by Billy Bitzer, and there’s a few with Mary Pickford and Henry Walthall. Also watch for Mack Sennett, the future discoverer of Charlie Chaplin, as an actor in a good half of these.