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December 1, 2023
As the deadline for submitting my paper, "A History of Divided Cinema, Part Two" approaches (scheduled for December 24th), I've begun to feel that the foundation of this paper lies in the first paper I wrote, "D.W. Griffith: The Law of Frame and Separation." No, not just that, but I've also come to feel that my papers on Mikio Naruse and Alfred Hitchcock were actually extensions of "D.W. Griffith: The Law of Frame and Separation." At the time, I had absolutely no such awareness. In the Mikio Naruse paper, I described the event of "voyeurism," in the Hitchcock paper, the relationship between the external (reading) and internal ("seeing") aspects of film, and in "A History of Divided Cinema," the division caused by the shot-reverse shot from inside—all written as I saw it on screen. However, I was stunned when I read the passage, "Before Montage," of "D.W. Griffith: The Law of Frame and Separation."
"Until now, discussions of Griffith have tended to emphasize and strongly advocate aspects of 'spatial separation,' such as 'cross-cutting' or 'parallel montage.' However, the power of such 'editing' lies in the inherent power of Griffith's screens themselves, the visual power of the 'internal separation' that is endlessly repeated within the screen. Before succumbing to the formal temptation of the screen-chain (collision) effect of montage, shouldn't we first thoroughly examine (see) the content of the screen itself? The screens in Griffith's films are already 'separated' before editing, and by further separating these screens through editing, all separations short-circuit and collide, thereby elevating the power of the entire work."
Isn't everything I've done since this paper essentially what's written here? This first paper was written to coincide with the founding of the Film Research Academy, a time of complete uncertainty, but this event of "separation" has had a significant impact on subsequent papers in the Film Research Academy.
December
1, 2023, Takashi Fujimura
Film Research Academy First Film Essay
"D.W. Griffith: The Law of Frame and Separation" - June 17, 2006
This essay examines how great filmmakers expanded the limitations of the "frame" in film.
Chair
Whenever
I see a chair in a movie, I have a habit of involuntarily muttering, "It's
Griffith." It's only natural to groan "It's Griffith..." when
you see Lillian Gish sewing while rocking her chair in John Huston's "The
Unforgiven" (April 6, 1960), and it's not strange to sense a nod to
Griffith when John Wayne passes by his mother's rocking chair, rocking it
particularly hard. And when Norman Bates' "Mother" turns around in
Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" (September 8, 1960), rocking her chair, I
still can't help but mutter, "Isn't this Griffith no matter how you look
at it...?" And then there's Tobe Hooper's "SALEM’S LOT"
(November 17, 1979) ,Even when watching the scene in where Jeffrey Hunter
causes Lew Ayers to have a heart attack while sitting in a chair, I can't help
but think, "That must be Griffith..." This movie prop, the
"chair," is something that every human being will inevitably use at
some point in their daily life. Chairs are essential for human life, and I
believe that a first-class filmmaker is someone who can beautifully depict the
basic actions of sitting and standing.
"Death in Venice"
"Death in Venice" is a "movie about chairs." The film ends with a shot of Dirk Bogarde being carried away by men on the beach. Why did Visconti go to such trouble for such a complicated directorial choice? It was to keep Bogarde away from the "chair." The cruelty of this scene lies in the horror of the moment when Bogarde is pulled further and further away from the "chair." How many times did Bogarde sit in the "chair" in the film? The first thing he does on the beach is have a chair brought to him, and if there is no chair, the edge of the boat or the ground itself serves as a substitute, protecting Bogarde's life. For him, with his heart condition, the chair is a refuge comparable to a life support system, a place of peace, and the only sanctuary that fulfills his life. However, in the end, Bogarde is brutally torn away from that "chair," slowly moved away, belittled in a long shot, and stared at continuously in a long take. What an incredibly cruel and merciless portrayal. Biologically, Bogart's death may have been a heart attack, but cinematically, it undeniably occurred in each and every moment as he was "pulled away from the chair" and "moved away from it." A lingering death—this is an extremely grotesque scene that can only be described as "Bogart being slowly tortured." But even after witnessing Visconti's vivid portrayal of the "chair," I still can't help but mutter, "This might actually be Griffith..."
Chairs and Griffith
I have
only ever seen one Griffith film that does not feature a chair. It is an early
short film called "THE FAMAL OF SPECIES" (April 13, 1912), a
wonderful short film that strongly evokes John Ford, in which three women,
tormented by hunger, wander the desert and bitterly bicker, but in the end they
discover a baby left behind by Native Americans, and that alone restores their
humanity and leads to reconciliation. In this case, since the setting is the
limited area of the desert, it is natural that no chair appears.
"Way Down East"
Of the countless chairs that have appeared in Griffith's other films, the moment I can never forget is in "WAY DOWN EAST" (1920), when Lillian Gish, the mother, hastily baptizes her dying illegitimate child, who has been refused baptism, hoping to at least send him to heaven. Here, Lillian Gish places her child in a rocking chair, kneels on the floor, and baptizes the child with her own hands. It is a divinely inspired scene, and there is an incredible anecdote that director Griffith wept while directing, and the baby's real father, who was watching the filming on set, fainted (Lillian Gish Autobiography, p. 269). Every time I see this moment, I am always deeply moved, but I wonder why. First of all, in this scene, it is not the "cross-cutting" or "close-up" techniques that are often mentioned in relation to Griffith, but rather, to borrow Eisenstein's words, the content of the "depiction" within the "one-shot screen" (Note I: Eisenstein Collected Works, Vol. 6, p. 68) that is at issue. In other words, it is Griffith's aspect as a realist observer that is at issue. Now, there must be a secret in the use of the "chair" as a prop in this scene from "The Road to the East." However, I do not think that the visual image of the "chair" itself moved me. It seems we should consider that something narrative has been added to that "chair," and that this is what gives power to the image. So, what is that "something"?
Griffith's Law of Chairs
Let's
first examine how chairs are used in Griffith's works. In Griffith's works,
chairs are sometimes used as a symbol of master, as in "His Trust"
(1911) when a Black slave offers his chair to his mistress, and sometimes as a
sleeping place for a dreamy girl, as in "The New York Hat" (1912). In
"As Life Is" (1910), it is used as a meeting place for lovers, and
later as the place where Pickford returns to his hometown and is reunited with
his father, and in "In the Bordware States" (1910), it is used as a place
where an injured person is made to sit. Furthermore, chairs are used in many
ways other than their original function. In "The Birth of a Nation"
(1915), a chair is used as the place where Lillian Gish is held captive with a
gag in her mouth; in "Orphans of the Storm" (1921), the back of an
upside-down chair is used as a pillow for the injured Danton; in "Selfish
Peggy" (1910), it's used as a substitute for attack and defense; in
"The House of Darkness" (1913), it's a hiding place for thugs; and in
"The Sealed Room" (1909) and "The Musketeers of Pig Alley"
(1912), it's finally given the mission of being a place where people die.
Living, dying, loving, incidents, accidents, and returning home... in
Griffith's works, chairs are not merely for sitting; they are essential items
used in every aspect of life. I have absolutely no knowledge of any other
author who uses chairs in such a diverse range of ways. And when we closely
observe Griffith's use of chairs, we find that the screen becomes far more
vibrant when we view them not merely as independent props—things to sit on, hit
with, or hide behind—but as symbols of "relationships" between
people.
Furthermore,
when "children" are added to the mix, the relationship represented by
Griffith's chair becomes more visually prominent and complete within the
framework of "family." In "The Sunbeam" (1911), Claire
McDowell, playing an old maid, is suddenly kissed on the hand by a young girl,
and collapses into the chair in a daze, then picks up the girl, awakening to
motherhood. In "Home, Sweet Home" and "The Battle at Elderbush
Gulch" (1913), newborn babies are repeatedly seen happily rocking in
rocking chairs, clinging to their mother's or father's lap. Here, the
Victorian, or rather Griffith's, melodramatic parent-child relationship is
revealed: children are wrapped in shawls, held in their mother's arms while she
sits in a chair, and gently rocked as they grow.
In John
Ford's "How Green Was My Valley" (1941), a film by a Griffiths
protégé, when the brothers leave their mother, they seat her in a rocking
chair, have her close her eyes, and rock the chair before leaving. Similarly,
in Henry Hathaway's "The Sons of Katie Elder," John Wayne continues
to rock his deceased mother's rocking chair. In these scenes, the chair is not
merely a means of sitting, but is more strongly visually symbolized in the
"relationship" between parent and child, and child and grandchild. We
will call this tripartite relationship between "mother" and
"child" centered around the "chair" "Griffith's Law of
the Chair."
So, what
moved me in "Way Down East" was perhaps the baptism of the child
placed in the chair. The mother's love—baptizing her child, who has little time
left to live, in her cradle—is undoubtedly narratively revealed on screen. But
the emotion I felt wasn't that kind of fulfilled, happy feeling. It was a
paradoxical emotion brought about by the imagery created by absence rather than
presence, by something "missing." So what exactly was
"missing" in that scene? It was "mother."
For
example, in the aforementioned film, "The New York Hat," the moment
after Pickford sits in a chair and dreams of a hat made in New York, Lionel
Barrymore, entrusted with Pickford's care by his deceased mother, appears and
presents him with the hat. Only by viewing the chair Pickford was sitting in as
symbolizing his "relationship" with his deceased mother does the hat
indirectly evoke the emotion of a "gift from a weeping mother."
Similarly, in other works, such as "His Trust," the relationship
between master and servant is often symbolized, and in other works,
relationships like "lovers" or "father and son" are
frequently implied. This tendency is clearly evident in his other works as
well. Like the elderly Barr Mackintosh in "WAY DOWN EAST," who dozes
off comfortably in the garden sunlight with a towel draped over his face by
Lillian Gish, or like the psychiatric patient Charles Hill Mailes in "THE
HOUSE OF DARKNESS" (1913), who collapses into his chair upon hearing the
beautiful piano music played by Claire McDowell, men no longer see the chairs
as mere "chairs," but sink deeply into them with a nostalgic feeling,
as if being held in their mother's arms, finding solace in them. Similarly,
like the famous scene in "INTOLERANCE" (1916) where Lillian Gish sits
in a chair in a room bathed in natural light, rocking a cradle, or like
Josephine Crowell as the mother rocking in a rocking chair at the beginning of
"HOME, SWEET HOME" (1914), women too are comfortably nestled in the
chairs with a magnificent display of maternal warmth.
Props
Before delving into the reasons, let's return to and examine Griffith's general use of "props," including "chairs." Griffith is known not only for his use of chairs but also for his use of animals, hats, aprons, and letters. It's easy to imagine that the animals were passed down to Eisenstein, the aprons and chairs to John Ford, and the letters to Lubitsch, but what I want to draw attention to is the "use" of props that I myself call "separation." For example, in "Hearts of the World" (1917), there is a scene where Lillian Gish exchanges photographs with Bobby Harlon before he goes to war, and they look at them often, reminiscing about each other. Also, in "Way Down East," there is a scene where a pigeon owned by Richard Barthelmess lands on Lillian Gish's shoulder as she stands in the shade of a tree, and the pigeon and Gish kiss. The use of the photograph and the pigeon here is "separation." The men's souls "separate" from the people they inhabit, inhabiting the objects themselves, such as photographs and doves. The women touch, embrace, and kiss these objects. Through gestures and situations, the film takes the props of a typical movie and elevates them to a new level in terms of their relationship with people.
Separation
This technique of "separation" has been passed down to filmmakers since Griffith. Among them, Yasujiro Ozu is a master of "separation" and can be called Griffith's legitimate successor. For example, in "Dragnet Girl" (1933), the emotions of Kinuyo Tanaka, who hit the boxing punching bag, "separate" and take over the continuously shaking punching bag. In "Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth" (1932), there is a hilarious gag in which Takeshi Sakamoto, a university janitor, picks up a coin purse in the schoolyard, opens it with a grin, and finds nothing inside. He turns it upside down and shakes the coin purse with all his might, accidentally ringing the closing bell attached to his wrist, causing the entire university to "close for the day." In this case, the sound of the bell itself is used as a "separation" of "Sakamoto's greedy character." In Ozu's case, for example, as symbolized by the shot of the empty room after Setsuko Hara's marriage in "Late Spring" (1949), the numerous empty stage spaces—a trademark of Ozu's work—are used as a "separation" of the souls of the people who lived and worked there. In this respect, Ozu is a legitimate successor to Griffith's "separation" technique, having highly applied and filtered it, developing it into the emotions of everyday human life itself.Furthermore, even Eisenstein, who criticized Griffith at every opportunity, in the famous scene of the baby carriage falling down the Odessa Steps in "BRONENOSETS POTEMKIN" (1925), the shot mother falls and hits the carriage, causing it to begin its descent. The falling carriage truly embodies the "separation" of the helpless mother's final emotions.Hopefully, you now have a general understanding of the meaning of the "separation" technique. Let's return to Griffith once again and look at one striking example. In "Orphans of the Storm," there is a scene where Lillian Gish retrieves her sister's (Dorothy Gish's) shawl from the villainess, folds it up, and rocks it back and forth like a baby. It is a sentimental scene typical of Griffith, but here, the soul of her sister has been transferred into the physical object of the shawl. The shawl has "separated" from Dorothy, and Dorothy's soul itself is contained within it. Similarly, in "AN UNSEEN ENEMY" (1912), the orphaned sisters Lillian and Dorothy lament, pointing to a chair in their deceased father's study, "Oh, Father..." Here, the "chair" is "separated" from their father. Furthermore, in "ORPHANS OF THE STORM," Lillian Gish pulls a chair with her sister's blanket on it towards herself as if it were her sister, before beginning her sewing. The beginnings of this repeated "separation" are already brilliantly shown in the early short story "WILFUL PEGGY" (1910). In this story, the man rejected by Mary Pickford touches the leg of the chair she threw at him after she leaves, and then deliberately points to the glass she drank from, mourning her absence. This is a striking scene that explicitly demonstrates "separation" through gestures and body language. The object is separated from its essence, and the soul attaches itself to the object. Griffith's use of "separation" in his props is countless, but each instance is depicted with an almost blatant bluntness, much like Lillian Gish's swaying shawl.Whether Griffith discovered this "separation" technique is unknown. However, it's safe to say that he refined it and perfected it cinematically. And it goes without saying that this technique of "separating" substance from soul was later carried on through the development of cinematic techniques, evolving into the separation of "mirrors," and then, with the advent of talkies, into the separation of "sound" from its source.
Why Separate Them?
So why "separate" the substance from the soul? Let's consider another example: the separation of substance from voice. This is the famous scene in "Orphans of the Storm" where the sisters reunite in the alley beside the apartment building. Lillian Gish sits in a chair on the second floor of the apartment building when she "hears" a familiar voice singing from outside. However, since this is a silent film, we doesn't actually "hear" it; rather, we know she "hears" it by watching Lillian Gish's face change, her emotions rise, and her search for the source of the sound coming from outside the screen. Here, Dorothy outside the frame and Dorothy's voice inside are "separated." There's no doubt that part of the emotional impact of this scene lies in this technique of "separation."
So why is this "separation" so "moving"? Human beings can be annoying when they're around, but become endearing when they're gone—this melodramatic sentiment, this sadness of absence, may be what touches our hearts through the characters who interact with separated objects and voices. But even before that, since film is an extremely limited two-dimensional medium where shadows move within a frame, the very technique of "separating" people and objects, people and voices, and placing the main body outside the frame to allow us to imagine its existence, can be said to be an extremely rich cinematic technique that infinitely expands the small frame horizontally and vertically through imagination. At the same time, it stimulates and engages our imagination, and evokes a longing for the separated objects. As Béla Balázs pointed out 70 years ago, "Searching for the source of a sound creates a special, tense moment" (The Spirit of Film 203). In that scene from "Orphans of the Storm," Dorothy's singing voice was "separated" from Dorothy herself, which paradoxically created a suspense and nostalgia in us as we "search" for Dorothy, and at the same time, we are deeply moved by the courageous figure of Lillian Gish as she earnestly "searches" for Dorothy. How beautiful the act of "searching" for a loved one is, and how well the medium of film conveys the emotion of this act to us is surely not unrelated to the fact that the medium of film itself has the limitation of a "frame," just as the limitation of our "physical body" drives us to discover more about ourselves. André Bazin's statement that "the frame is centripetal, the screen is centrifugal" (What is Cinema IV, p. 175), and Keiji Asanuma's writing that "because the image is a part, it can only exist on the support of the whole that includes it, and also foreshadows the whole that includes it" (Film Studies, p. 165), suggest that the very limitation of the frame is, conversely, closely related to the artistry of the film medium. Only artists who have sincerely confronted the limitations of the medium itself can devise techniques to expand those limitations through imagination. In this context, the technique of "separation" is an extremely cinematic wellspring of imagination that transforms the very limitations of film into emotion.
Everything revolves around the chair
Recalling
the christening scene in "WAY DOWN EAST," the mother, who should be
rocking the baby on her lap, is absent. Griffith explicitly separates
"Lillian Gish" from the "chair." Lillian Gish is separated
from the chair where a mother should be sitting, holding her child, as is the
case in many of Griffith's works, and kneels on the floor. What moved me about
this scene was not only the emotional impact of the positive imagery—at least
the idea of a child being christened in their mother's cradle—but even more
so, the beauty of the negative power brought about by the
"separation" created by the "absence" of the "mother
not sitting" in the "chair."
It is
important to note that what is "separated" here is not
"mother" and "child," but "mother" and
"chair." As mentioned earlier, if the tripartite relationship between
"mother," "child," and the "chair" is Griffith's
Law of the Chair, then the resulting "separation" between
"mother" and "child" is merely a "physical
separation" of two entities, and unrelated to the "imaginative
separation" based on the limitations of the frame. Rather, it is precisely
because the mother is "separated" from the "chair," a symbol
of Griffith's family relationship, and simultaneously because the child is
placed in the negative symbolic relationship of "the chair separated from
the mother," that various allegories collide on the screen, stimulating
our imagination. Everything unfolds around the "chair."
In the
chair scene in "How Green Was My Valley," the fact that the child is
separated "from the chair" evokes a sense of nostalgia for the past
days when she rocked the chair with her child in her arms, leading to the
overall emotional impact of the scene. Similarly, in the chair scene in
"The Sons of Katie Elder," the fact that both mother and child are
separated "from the chair" suggests an even longer history of the
family, and the seemingly monotonous movement of an empty chair rocking evokes
a profound sense of nostalgia that grips our hearts.
So why
was Lillian Gish "separated" from the chair? It's because, due to the
poverty of her social circumstances, she was forced to act not as a mother, but
as a baptist. As a result, the baby, placed in the chair without its mother,
despite having its mother right in front of it, is implied to be an
"orphan" on screen. The brilliance of Griffith's
"separation" technique lies not in a mere physical separation by
force, but in the delicate direction of the suggestion of family relationships
centered around the chair as a prop, and the placement of the characters,
implying the image of a person's "circumstances" in just a
"single shot." Herein lies a remarkable power of human observation. A
child's life is short. Lillian Gish wants to baptize her child in her arms.
However, because the child is illegitimate, the baptism is refused. But if she
doesn't baptize the child, the child will go to hell. Thus, Lillian Gish's
"situation," forced to choose between the two extremes of "mother"
and "baptist," visually clashes with the image of the mother
separated from the chair within the frame itself. As a result, the screen is
beautifully and sadly enveloped by the mother's heart, which desires to send
her child to heaven, even as an "orphan," rather than to hell as a
child with a mother.
What
makes this scene different from other "separations" is that, while in
ordinary "separations" the separated entity is imagined outside the
frame, in "The Way East," the separation of the mother and the chair
occurs while the mother remains within the frame, yet the image is separated
outside the frame. Within the screen, the opposing forces of positive and
negative continue to clash in a tremendous melodramatic conflict. Who in film
history could have achieved such magical direction? This can only be described
as a perfect screen. And this is the ultimate cinematic melodrama through
visuals.
Griffith and Separation
The brilliance of the chair scene in "WAY DOWN EAST" lies in how it conveys the invisible image of "orphan" through the visible relationship centered around the chair. This theme of "orphan" is none other than a decisive theme that Griffith continued to explore throughout his life, exemplified by "AN UNSEEN ENEMY," "THE BATTLE AT ELDERBUSH GULCH," and "ORPHANS OF THE STORM." At the same time, this theme of "orphan" itself signifies "separation" from parents and society.
★Disaster → "The Battle at Elderbush Gulch"
★Accident → "The Unchanging Sea"
★Betrayal → "An Alcadian Maid" (August 6, 1910), "Way Down East," "The Painted Lady" (October 19, 1912)
★Abduction → "The Adventures of Dollie," "The Girl and Her Trust," "Orphans of the Storm"
★Death → "The New York Hat," "The Mothering Heart"
Before Montage
Up until now, discussions of Griffith have tended to emphasize and strongly advocate for aspects of "spatial separation," such as "cross-cutting" or "parallel montage." However, the power of such "editing" lies in the inherent power of Griffith's screens themselves, the visual power of "internal separation" endlessly repeated within the screen. Before succumbing to the formal temptation of the screen chain (collision) effect of montage, shouldn't we first thoroughly examine (see) the content of the screen itself once again? The screens in Griffith's films are already "separated" before editing, and by further separating these screens through editing, all separations short-circuit and collide, thereby elevating the power of the entire work.
Ethics and Perspective
I wrote that the technique of "separation" is an extremely cinematic wellspring of imagination that transforms the very limits of film into emotion. At the same time, the technique of "separation" is not only a method of visually conveying the theme of separation, such as orphans, onto the screen, but also an ethical technique that directly confronts the limitations of film as a frame. I believe that film is life itself, and its artistic brilliance largely depends on how the filmmaker's "perspective" and the issue of human "ethics" are pitted against and interwoven within the limited medium of film.
Griffith's screens are filled with the wonder of "watching" a film. It was the screens of "INTOLERANCE" that inspired me to approach film as a film study, attempting to unravel its visual aspects. Perhaps this is because the visual screens of "INTOLERANCE" were endlessly filled with a rich interplay between "perspective and ethics." That is why I am drawn not to consuming film merely as an invisible narrative, but to the temptation of "seeing" the visible screens as a work of art.
I would like to share with my beloved Griffith the happiness of being able to begin my first thesis with the theme of D.W. Griffith.
The above is merely a matter of the placement of props and characters, and does not address the composition, lighting, set design, costumes, acting, and other various factors that frame the scene. What I have written here is merely an examination of the depiction of a very small part of the subject matter within a "single-shot screen." At the same time, I do not intend to say that the screen will be filled simply by "separating" things at all costs. In the future, I will study to broaden the scope of my research and develop a more fruitful theory of film. Thank you for your continued support.