Roaring Twenties

Famous Silent Film Directors: Griffith, Keaton, and Others

The 1920s was the most concentrated decade of great filmmaking in the medium’s history, and the directors who worked in Hollywood in those years formed one of the great generations of the art. D.W. Griffith had already invented the modern feature film by 1915. Charlie Chaplin was, by 1920, the most famous person in the world. Buster Keaton was perfecting the visual comedy of the silent era. Erich von Stroheim, F.W. Murnau, King Vidor, and Cecil B. DeMille were the principal Hollywood directors of the decade, and a generation of European directors — Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch, Mauritz Stiller, Jean Renoir — was arriving in California to extend the international modernism of the silent cinema.

For the wider context, see the parent Golden Age of Hollywood cluster page and the 1920s Arts and Entertainment pillar overview. For the industry itself, For the technological revolution that ended the silent era,

D.W. Griffith and the Birth of the Feature Film

David Wark Griffith (1875-1948), born in Oldham County, Kentucky, was the founding figure of the American feature film. He directed his first film, The Adventures of Dollie, in 1908 at the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, and in the next five years he directed nearly 500 short films and developed the basic visual vocabulary of the medium: the close-up, the cross-cut, the iris shot, the parallel editing.

His 1915 epic The Birth of a Nation was the film that made the modern feature film possible. The three-hour film was a commercial sensation, the first film screened at the White House (by President Woodrow Wilson), and the first film to charge the then-unprecedented price of two dollars for admission. It was also a propaganda work for the Ku Klux Klan of the Reconstruction era and remains the most controversial film in American history. Griffith’s 1916 response, Intolerance, was a four-part historical epic. Griffith’s career declined through the 1920s; he was unable to adapt to sound and died in 1948 in Hollywood, largely forgotten.

Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton

Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) co-founded United Artists in 1919 with D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks. His 1920s features — The Kid (1921) with Jackie Coogan, A Woman of Paris (1923), The Gold Rush (1925), and The Circus (1928, which won a special Academy Award) — defined the form of the silent comedy. (For Chaplin and the other stars,

Buster Keaton (1895-1986) was the great stone-face of the silent screen. His 1920s features at Metro and then United Artists — Our Hospitality (1923), The Navigator (1924), Sherlock Jr. (1924), The General (1926), and Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) — are now treated as among the great achievements of the silent cinema. The General, set during the Civil War, was a commercial disappointment on its 1926 release but is now routinely cited as one of the greatest American films. Keaton was forced to move to MGM in 1928, where the studio system stripped him of creative control; he had a long second career in television and personal appearances from the late 1940s until his death in 1986.

Erich von Stroheim and F.W. Murnau

Erich von Stroheim (1885-1957), born in Vienna, was the most extravagant directorial talent of the silent era. His 1919 directorial debut Blind Husbands was the first American film to be directed by an artist of European sensibility. His 1924 Greed, an adaptation of Frank Norris’s McTeague, was originally cut to nearly nine and a half hours and was reduced against his will to two. His later silent features — The Merry Widow (1925) with Mae Murray, The Wedding March (1928) — and the partial sound film Hello, Sister! (1933) were similarly extravagant. He ended his career as an actor, most memorably in Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion (1937).

F.W. Murnau (1888-1931), born Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe in Bielefeld, Germany, was the German Expressionist master of the silent film. The 1920 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (directed by Robert Wiene) and Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu, an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, defined the German Expressionist cinema. His 1924 The Last Laugh and 1926 Faust were major achievements of the German silent film. Recruited to Fox in 1926, he made Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927), the most honored silent film of its era; the film won the Academy Award for Best Unique and Artistic Production at the first Academy Awards in 1929. He died in a car accident in California in March 1931, a week before the premiere of his last film, Tabu (1931).

King Vidor, Cecil B. DeMille, and the Hollywood Establishment

King Vidor (1894-1982), born in Galveston, Texas, was one of the great American directors of the silent and sound eras. His 1925 The Big Parade, a World War I epic starring John Gilbert, was the most commercially successful silent film of the decade. His 1928 The Crowd is now treated as one of the great American films of the silent era. His 1929 Hallelujah, the first major studio film with an all-Black cast, was a milestone of African American cinema. He received an honorary Academy Award in 1979.

Cecil B. DeMille (1881-1959), born in Ashfield, Massachusetts, was the founding director of the Hollywood feature film. His 1914 The Squaw Man, the first feature-length film shot in Hollywood, was the founding production of what would become Paramount. His 1923 The Ten Commandments (the silent version) and his 1927 The King of Kings were the founding films of the Hollywood biblical epic. He would return to The Ten Commandments in 1956 in the most commercially successful sound version.

The European Directors in Hollywood

The 1920s saw a generation of European directors arrive in Hollywood. Ernst Lubitsch (1892-1947, German-born) came to Hollywood in 1922 and directed The Marriage Circle (1924) and Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925) before returning to Europe; he would come back to Hollywood in 1935 to define the sophisticated comedy of the sound era. Mauritz Stiller (1883-1928, Swedish-born) came to Hollywood in 1925 with Greta Garbo, whom he had discovered; he directed The Temptress (1926) and The Street of Sin (1928) before his death in 1928. Jean Renoir (1894-1979, French-born) came to Hollywood in 1940. Fritz Lang (1890-1976, Austrian-born) came to Hollywood in 1936.

The Soviet, French, and Women Pioneers

The 1920s was also the great decade of Soviet montage cinema. Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948) made Battleship Potemkin (1925), the most famous film of the silent era after The Birth of a Nation and The General, and October: Ten Days That Shook the World (1928). Alexander Dovzhenko (1894-1956) made Earth (1930). Vsevolod Pudovkin (1893-1953) made Mother (1926) and The End of St. Petersburg (1927). The Soviet montage style influenced Hollywood for the next generation.

The French Impressionist cinema of the 1920s, including Abel Gance (1889-1981, J’accuse, 1919; Napoléon, 1927), Marcel L’Herbier (1888-1979, L’Inhumaine, 1924), and Germaine Dulac (1882-1942, The Seashell and the Clergyman, 1928), was the principal avant-garde movement. Alice Guy-Blaché (1873-1968), the first woman film director, worked from 1896 to 1920, founded the Solax Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, in 1910, and made the first American narrative film with an all-African American cast, A Fool and His Money, in 1911. (For the wider silent film context,

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