Why is DW Griffith not the greatest director?

Why is DW Griffith not the greatest director?

He directed wrongthink and must be memory-holed.

How long is his neck?

Too boring

Why does Dickens get away with it?

Because he's an artist.
>Film
Read a fucking book, faggot.

Oops!

This is why film will never be art. Griffith is too concerned with narrative

As one unsigned review of The Birth of a Nation in Motion Picture News famously opined, “In dramatic and photographic technique, it is beyond our present-day criticism.” Imagine a contemporary critic openly recognizing that a film was so advanced, so far beyond his or her comprehension, that it actively defied established nomenclature. Yet that’s precisely the type of territory where one finds oneself when discussing the work of D.W. Griffith, whose conception of film form was borne of his desire to wrestle cinema from the confines of novelty and elevate it to the realm of high art. His controversial socio-cultural outlook—okay, racism—isn’t sufficient enough grounds to disregard his enormous influence on both mainstream and avant-garde filmmaking. If anything, his unselfconscious, unwavering desire to essentially imprint himself on the cinematic image, even at the expense of his public perception, ultimately made him a martyr for the cause; as Stan Brakhage hyperbolically but poetically claimed, “hunks of Christ broke off in Griffith’s psyche.”
But it was more than just retaliation that drove Griffith to make this epic story of “Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages,” a film whose very title seemed to disregard and actively contradict the sentiments Griffith displayed throughout The Birth of a Nation. The narrative possibilities of film form fascinated Griffith, as did the freedom with which to integrate narrative style into the medium. The most common criticism leveled against Intolerance is that its overall story is nearly impossible to follow, which isn’t an unfair assessment. Its four interwoven sagas of human injusticelikely work well enough on their own, but structured as they are, it can be damn near impossible to process them procedurally.

He slept with the Gishes