Simply put: this is the beginning of modern cinema.

Watching this back to back with Griffith’s earlier The Redman’s View(also 1909) makes for a hell of a facinating viewing. TRV shows us the end of the old world; ACIW brings us the beginning of the 20th century. Nine years in it is already falling apart. Over one hundred years ago tycoons are still drunk with power, the influential sit at their dinner parties not discussing the real matter, the police are violent and intolerant without any understanding of the situation at hand, and the poor await their fate. As for the Earth…the trees, the land; they’re already long dead. Farmers attempt to plant on an Earth already long rotted away. Indoors, men in stand stiffly; constrasting with the contorted positions of the farmers, attempting to give off an Earthiness but in the end only able to signify their doom. At the wheat pit only chaos ensues, while the Wheat King stands alone, flaunting his disconnection from the people as they are lost in a barrage of movement. An elderly man falls down on the stairs, just like a pieta.

As we examine the Gold of the Wheat, the upper classes parade at the their dinner parties. Seconds later we will see the poor lined up for their bread unable to pay for it, standing completely like a still image, but even moreso like a painting. The poor can’t move, but the rich can. We’ll cut back to the rich temporarily, but we’ll suddenly return to the reality of the farmers. After seeing the world of the upper and lower classes, we at last comprehend the dying Earth; suddenly the vistas become apocalyptic.

Some might notice the painted backdrops and the note giving the Wheat King control of the entire wheat market of the world. This isn’t exagerration. It’s a higher reality. Meanwhile, the rotting Earth crumbles and where humans are left, intolerance reigns.

In the end, we are left with a single farmer, on an empty, dead field. As he tries to plant more the film fades out. The only thing he has left to wait for is death.

This is a film of extrodinary power; the melodramatic moments are still very believable, and the shot of the bread being given away is almost unbearably moving. Even here, Griffith proves melodrama is the ultimate conveyor of emotion.

Meanwhile, the elegiac state of The Redman’s View still lingers, like it happened yesterday.