Eloquent Gestures: The Transformation of Performance Style in the Griffith Biograph Films

Between 1908 and 1913, D. W. Griffith played a key role in the reformulating of film's narrative techniques, thus contributing to the creation of what we now think of as the classical Hollywood cinema. This book is the only extensive treatment of a critical period in the history of film acting: the emergence of the realistic "verisimilar" style in Griffith's biograph films. Roberta Pearson shows how Griffith gradually abandoned the deliberately affected "histrionic" acting style derived fro...