SOURCE: "D. W. Griffith and the Birth of the Movies" and "Judith of Bethulia," in The "I" of the Camera: Essays in Film Criticism, History, and Aesthetics, Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 11-17, 18-30.

In the following essay, Rothman discusses Griffith's early post-Biograph film work, with an emphasis on Judith of Bethulia.

Film was not invented to make movies possible. The Lumière brothers' first public screening in 1895 was the culmination of innumerable technical developments that finally allowed films to be made and projected, but the invention of film did not immediately give rise to movies as we know them. Within ten years, film had become a sizeable industry and medium of popular entertainment, but news films, travelogues, films of vaudeville acts, trick films, and gag films were the dominant forms. Even as late as 1907, dramatic narratives constituted only one-sixth of the "product."

The turning point came in 1908. With...