Lew, while Bruckheimer's role might be listed differently, we would not be able to point to so many consistencies of style and method in his films were he not effectively "in control" more than just supportive of the artists he hires (like Weinstein). Films with different directors, DoPs, composers, writers all end up having very similar scenes, looks, plot devices. So I am not being unfair to use him as a comparison point to Griffith, even if you don't agree with the comparison.
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One thing I'll pick out is that I don't complain about manipulative filmmaking at all. Really all filmmaking is manipulative, and I love it at its most crass, directors like Sirk, Fassbinder, Godard, Rosselini, Lang, Sam Fuller, Eisenstein etc., that use cinema as a shotgun and let us have both barrels.
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Certainly we all understand that we might use "manipulation" to describe any artist at work. Their goal after all is to guide our thought process, both emotional and logical, in a certain direction through their art.
It just happens that we generally use the word to describe the more heavy handed efforts to do this. In the case of Griffith what I am pointing to is an APPEAL to contemporary fears and hatreds in his target audience, middle to low class whites.
When he utilizes blacks and carpetbaggers as villains in BoaN and does so with strong stereotypes and 1-dimensionality, he goes beyond just making a simple good vs. bad tale. He is forgoing an honest effort to engage the audience with filmmaking techniques, to transport them to other thinking, and is instead coming to them, appealing to the feelings that they have already brought with them to the theater.
We have evidence that it is this sort of appeal in the fact that Klan membership took off after the film's release. We know he was tapping into those strong emotions that already existed, rather than creating any of his own. His audiences already saw these "problems" as part of their everyday life and found the film to be the final push to join up, even though the reality of the film was supposed to be 50 years earlier (not unlike how Altman used the Korean war to make his appeal to Vietnam emotions, but in a far more textured manner).
Yes, most narratives rely on characters following certain moral codes that we define as actions of good or bad people, beating up a woman or shooting a man in the back as examples of bad actions, helping an old lady cross the street as a good one. But stronger storytelling, even then, challenged these thought processes, sometimes questioned the moral codes, or at least grayed the behaviors of characters.
Griffith made his name playing directly on the fears and hatreds of the day.
Brook brings up the example of Der Golem, which is perfect to contradict Griffith. A Jew performs the "black arts" it would seem, and yet in the end he is the protagonist of the film, he is responsible not just for saving other Jews but also those people who would oppress them. He is logical and understanding even while utilizing some ancient magic that would imply an anti-Christian theme.
Contrast this ambiguity of the character's moral position with that of any character in a Griffith film. Blacks are bad, very bad, full of the most anti-social behaviors, except for the occasional "one of the good ones" type. They can not be both good and bad, they cannot display a variety of behaviors and have depth. They dare not create sympathy in the eyes of the racist target audiences that craved Griffith films.
The rich want to oppress us and destroy us, the poor farmers have no chance and are starved to death.
Indians were a violent people with the most barbaric behaviors.
Blacks were almost as bad though perhaps a bit more lazy.
A decent white woman could be menaced by those people of color at any moment and must be saved by the upstanding white hero.
These ideals played right to the audience's own feelings. Griffith rarely if ever dared challenge this ideal.
Contrast that to
The Confederate Ironclad from Kaleem Studios, a 2 reeler from 1912. Here we have white men and women on both sides of the fight. One woman is upstanding, the other a trickster who uses her charms to steal secrets. In the end it is actually the WOMEN who come to the rescue.
We still have the behaviors determining the characters nature, the good and the bad of them. But the characters often break type and in the end the narrative even breaks type by relying on the women's strength and ability.
And really all narrative is about what people do and say, that is what screenplays must use to determine characters. So it is no fault to have certain behaviors work this way. The fault comes when a director relies more directly on established stereotypes of behavior.
Yes, Der Golem features this view of the Rabbi, but as I mention it also contradicts some of those stereotypes and in fact places him squarely as the protagonist of the film, the very opposite of what the stereotype would be.
The reason we see this alternate view from Kaleem was because they were a Jewish company that appealed to minority audiences, including women. They saw a hole in the market, a group of people not being appreciated, and attempted to fill it.
That their films have not lived beyond Griffith doesn't mean that their relationship at the time was any different than that of "The Rock" and "The Piano" in current terms. Being more popular has never been a indicator of success on its own, and in fact is often (unfairly, IMO) seen as a marker of marginal quality.
Thomas Ince made very successful films, long before Civilization got made. He made enough money to build the studio that would become MGM and perhaps was the person most responsible for the move to California and the creation of Hollywood.
But just how many Thomas Ince films has the average film lover seen? How available or respected is his work? And most importantly, in comparison to Griffith how many Ince films remain PRESERVED? After all, if many more Griffith films simply survive by being better archived then how can we fairly compare other artists to him. We need films that simply have been lost to us to truly be fair in the comparison.
So in many ways Griffith has lived on to be THE first "great" filmmaker by being the only one to truly survive from 1905-1915. Imagine a future in which Scorsese's films were lost in a fire and all we had was Bruckheimer's films. He made a lot of money, his films exist to appreciate, it would be easy to dismiss Scorsese at that point.
Of course the difference is that now the film arts are appreciated as such and dupes, video, etc. exist as alternate sources. So Scorsese could not be forsaken as easily as the first filmmakers.
But I don't think its a stretch to say that Thomas Ince and Sidney Olcott have been unfairly forgotten in comparison to Griffith, and both enjoyed about as much success (at least pre-BoaN) as Griffith. But good luck getting to see any of their work now in comparison to Griffith's extensive catalog.
Note: Olcott is credited with making the first 5 reel film ever - "From the Manger to the Cross" in 1912. A film that earned $1m on $35K investment. It's in the National Film Registry...and its not quite as famous as BoaN, is it.
Meanwhile, Thomas Ince is
