Two years ago I started a marathon of films. My goal was to watch at least one film for every year from 1919 to 2018. For each of the next 10 days, I will be discussing a different decade of film and each year within it.
I will start today with 1910s. The film industry didn’t really take off until 1915 when D.W. Griffith created the epic Birth of a Nation. Prior to that most films were only short films and it was thanks to Griffith that the concept evolved into something longer and broader.
In 1919 he created one of the earliest romance films called Broken Blossoms. Most of Griffith’s films have held up pretty well, and this one is no exception. While it should be taken with a grain of salt (it features one of the earliest cases of yellowface), it is still a revolutionary film in the history of cinema.
Tomorrow…the 1920s.
Movies 