Birth of a Medium
Dickens, Griffith, and the Advent of Sentimental Cinema
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10866407 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Johns Johns (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2009 |
| Volume | 52 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 76 |
| Publication date | 2009-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Victorian Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0042-5222 • E-ISSN: 1527-2052 |
| Publisher | Indiana University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.2979/vic.2009.52.1.76 |
| OpenAlex | W2091784878 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 1 |
The impact of Charles Dickens’s storytelling upon the style of montage deployed in D. W. Griffith’s films has generated a striking amount of critical attention. Not enough has been said, however, about how these advances in film form triggered a retreat in historical content. Exploring the melodramatic similarities between Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation and Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities , as well as the state of cinema in the years leading up to Griffith’s unsettling masterpiece, this essay suggests that the American director’s appropriation of Dickensian form necessitated a sentimental, backward-looking engagement with history
Aesthetics · Appropriation · Art · Art history · Epistemology · Literature · Movie theater · Narrative · State (computer science · Storytelling · Style (visual arts · Cinema and Media Studies · Crime and Detective Fiction Studies · European history and politics · History · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.33 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2020 - 2021 (2) |
| Highly cited | No |