In all of these short films that the 34 year old D.W. Griffith made in 1909, he created a vocabulary for film-making like Daniel Defoe did for novel writing. I don't particularly like this offering in the same that I didn't like 'Robinson Crusoe', but I did feel that I could do it better in the same way that I felt that I could rewrite 'Crusoe' in an improved way. What this film needed was a trans-valuation of viewpoint so that it could be digested more easily for contemporary audiences. As it stands, it is unpalatable, not because of the period or the subject matter, but just the point of view. Opinions will always shift from generation to generation, but what may have been acceptable to Griffith's generation is not so now.
Review of The Brahma Diamond
