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JUST what Griffith contributed to ONE MILLION B. C. (’40) is a minor mystery of the American screen. Like much of the Hollywood work of Orson Welles and Erich von Stroheim, the released product differs from the artist’s original plan and its component parts have been subject to conflicting attributions of authorship. In the case of ONE MILLION B. C., this process of identification has been skewed by the accounts given by Hal Roach. The film was made under Roach’s supervision while he was an independent producer releasing through United Artists. Its credits list Roach as producer, and, along with Hal Roach Jr., co-director. In recent years Roach has consistently denied that Griffith played any important role in its making.

Contemporary accounts give a different impression, but no matter what they say, the best hard evidence of Griffith’s involvement lies within the film itself and its two antecedents in Griffith’s Biograph films, MAN’S GENESIS (’12) and BRUTE FORCE (’13). Though definitive reconstruction of the making of ONE MILLION B. C. and Griffith’s contribution to it awaits more comprehensive and trustworthy evidence, Griffith’s stylistic methods are recognizable in much of the film. In addition, the comments Griffith made at the time about his plan for it make a tentative analysis possible. ONE MILLION B. C. deserves consideration as a Griffith work in much the same way that Welles’ JOURNEY INTO FEAR (’42) signed by Norman Foster – and von Stroheim’s ‘s WALKING DOWN BROADWAY – in its released form, HELLO SISTER! (’33) – deserve consideration as Welles and von Stroheim films. Perhaps more so.

The ’30s were years of wandering for Griffith. Two years after the commercial failure of his last accredited work, THE STRUGGLE (’31), he sold his United Artists stock for $300,000. He worked on a radio series about the movies, traveled to Europe, and tried to package a Griffith-directed remake of BROKEN BLOSSOMS (’19). Hans Brahm got the job when the new BROKEN BLOSSOMS was produced in ’36; according to Rodney Ackland, an early participant in the remake project. Griffith departed after a pre-shooting casting dispute. While on a West Coast visit, Griffith was asked by his one-time INTOLERANCE (’16) assistant. W. S. Van Dyke, to help with the exteriors of SAN FRANCISCO (’36); at least part of that film’s massive, post-earthquake hill climbing scene is reportedly his. Two years later, he collaborated with ghostwriter James Hart on a critique of Hollywood that ran in the June 17, ’39 issue of “Liberty” magazine. About that time, evidence indicates, Griffith received a wire from Roach asking him to come back to Hollywood.

His return was announced in the June 18, ’39 NY “Times”: Griffith was to be an “associate” of Roach, serving in “an advisory capacity on the producer’s forthcoming program, and will direct a film if he finds subject that interests him.” The hiring arrangement was “purely verbal, so that the association may be terminated at the will of either executive.” Plan for ONE MILLION B. C., a project Roach may have had in mind when he hired Griffith, were not mentioned.

By September 3, ’39, Griffith was already working on the Roach lot. He had been assigned as producer of 1,000,000 B. C. (the title was late: changed from digits to words). Shooting was to begin immediately after completion of Lewis Milestone’s OF MICE AND MEN (’39). Griffith prepared for his work by, among other things screening such films as the Roach produced TOPPER TAKES A TRIP (’37) because, he told a “Times” reporter “I guess they’d like me to take a loot at what present-day screen magic is like.”

By early November Griffith had dispatched a location crew to Logandale, Nev., to shoot what “Variety” reported as three weeks of out-door sequences for the film. As the “Times” described it, “Roach is directing and will handle the dramatic phases of the film, with Griffith remaining in town, looking at rushes casting unfilled roles and supervising the special effects which will provide the major thrills of the film.”

The Roach-Griffith relationship was further delineated in a substantial feature on the film’s production published in the December 3,’39 “Times.” “Each is punctilious in demanding that the other be given a lion’s share of the credit Mr. Roach says, ‘Mr. Griffith is producing; I’m only directing. He worked on the script; a lot of the ideas are his; he’s casting the picture.’ Mr. Griffith says, ‘The picture is, of course, Mr. Roach’s he is directing. I am here merely in an advisory capacity.”

This exchange, rather strange considering the usual self-puffery that often distorts Hollywood division of labor analysis (and has distorted Roach’s subsequent descriptions of who did what), may have reflected a sense of foreboding on both Griffith’s and Roach’s part that the film was not going as well as either had planned.

Perhaps each was setting the other up for the bulk of the blame. At the same time, it was certainly in Roach’s interest as a studio head to exploit Griffith’s connection with the film and get publicity for his involvement. Roach told the “Times” he thought ONE MILLION B.C. was a “screwy idea.” Said Griffith: “I concur in that sentiment.”

Whatever their feelings about each other and the film in the last months of ’39, by January ’40, when at least much of ONE MILLION B.C. apparently was complete, Griffith was off the picture. One or both had terminated that purely verbal understanding, an understanding whose informality may be a clue to the degree of distrust in their relationship: one or both hadn’t wanted a written contract. Although “Variety” as late as March 20, ’40, listed Griffith as producer and Roach as director, the “Motion Picture Herald” in its January 6, ’40 issue, carried the Griffith-less credits of the release print. “Times” readers were not told of the change until April 21, ’40, after distribution of the film had begun but before its New York opening. As the newspaper reported it, “The Roach studio was noncommittal about the omission [of Griffith’s name from the credits], admitting only that Griffith had requested that his name be withdrawn from the picture because he disagreed with Roach over its production. Griffith was almost as indefinite in that courtly way of his, and explained that two directors never see eye to eye on a story.

“‘Mr. Roach,’ he said, ‘did not feel that it was necessary to give the characters as much individuality as I thought was needed, and so I did no not wish to appear responsible for the picture by having my name on it. My name would do the film little good and I am sure that the picture would do me little good.'”

According to “Variety,” Griffith quit “following dissension concerning casting and other angles.” His forebodings were at least partially validated by the reviews ONE MILLION B. C. received. The New York and national critics who bothered to review the film were mostly negative about it, perhaps because, as film historian William K. Everson has suggested, they were looking forward to another KING KONG (’33) and were disappointed to find, “none of the Willis O’Brien kind of mechanical wizardry.” Ray Seawright was credited with the special effects of ONE MILLION B.C. “but a great deal of back projection, matte work, and small pet-size reptiles blown up to giant proportions by optical lab work.”

While many reviewers tended to use the film as an excuse for glib putdowns of its anachronisms – which Roach freely admitted and its sometimes transparent special effects, several reviewed it seriously and on its own terms, giving it mild to moderately enthusiastic praise. Of these, the most perceptive may have been William Boehnel, who wrote in the “New York World-Telegram” that the film was especially notable on “two scores:

“(I) It is practically a silent film and it proves once and for all what little value dialogue really has in the cinema;

“(2) Its story of man’s struggle for existence and how a more civilized band absorbs a less advanced group is simple, entertaining and at times genuinely dramatic.”

Study of the film and its antecedents in Griffith’s work as well a available historical evidence very strongly indicates that to the extent ONE MILLION B. C. deserved, and deserves, praise on those “two scores,” the responsibility was largely D. W. Griffith’s. At the time the film was released, most reviewers had ignored him.

Despite what many have said, I find no contemporary evidence that Griffith was ever the official director of ONE MILLION B. C. (although it is possible). The origin of this evidently widespread and mistaken notion about Griffith’s official title could very well have been Griffith’s actual direction, or at least blocking out, of parts of the film. The line between producer and director was rather hazy, and it may he that for a few months in ’39 Griffith was given a chance to create, at age 64 and with supervision, yet one more addition to his oeuvre.

I suspect that was the way it happened, the hard evidence for it lying, with one documentary exception, solely within the matrix of ONE MILLION B. C. Griffith’s two other prehistoric films – MAN’S GENESIS and BRUTE FORCE and the lateral tracking shots that frame the narrative of his ABRAHAM LINCOLN (’30).

Subtitled “A psychological comedy based on the Darwinian theory of the evolution of Man.” MAN’S GENESIS, featured Mae Marsh as Lilywhite, Bobby Harron as her lover. Weakhands, and Wilfred Lucas as his rival. BRUTE FORCE. Griffith dressed the gentle couple in what comes across as gray but seems to have been brown; he clothed Bruteforce in black. Their names and clothing help tell the one-reeler’s story; the plot is straight boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, and boy-regains-girl with first attraction, then strength, and finally intelligence determining the couplings.

Griffith put this stock situation in prehistoric times and bracketed the action-oriented cave scenes with didactic modern-dress ones. He began the film by having an older man address a little bin; about to smack a little girl on the head with a stick: “Brains are better than brawn, son. Sit down and I’ll tell you the story of the cave man who first discovered this.”

The evolutionary progress that is the nub of all three prehistoric Griffith films comes when Weakhands, sitting in his cave and brooding over Bruteforce’s kidnapping and keeping of Lilywhite through physical strength alone, plays with a stick and discover that screwing it in a bagel-shaped rock creates a rather formidable weapon. With it Weakhands overpowers Bruteforce and recovers Lilywhite.

Griffith cuts back to the present. His story finished, the older man tells the boy and girl that “even more terrible weapons” since developed require more wisdom in their use. The boy gets rid of his stick and walks away arm and arm with the young girl.

The plot line of BRUTE FORCE (called WARS OF THE PRIMAL TRIBES by Griffith and, initially, IN PREHISTORIC DAYS by Biograph) is basically the same. Once again the prehistoric action is bracketed by related modern scenes, though this time the parallels are strengthener by having Harron and Marsh in both Narrative time has passed since the end of MAN’S GENESIS. The cave people routinely use the weapon Weakhands has discovered.

The visual presentation is more sophisticated, more controlled. ??? what’s important for our purposes is that in this two-reeler the narrative conception is more developed. The tension is between two tribes, not two men, and rather than using their clothes as defining marks, Griffith makes the distinction clear by having the enemy group walk and gesture in apelike manner in contrast to the human-like carriage and food gathering skills of the Harron-Marsh group. The more civilized tribe spends much of its time in cared-for caves; the more primitive groups are more at home on rocks.

On a number of levels, ONE MILLION B. C. is both more complex and more diffuse than the two Biograph shorts. But Griffith’s influence – and the film’s roots in those shorts and in Abraham Lincoln – is clear. More significantly, visually and thematically ONE MILLION B. C. only works where Griffith’s impact is evident. The rest of the film, with the exception of occasionally not-at-all-bad special effects (which Griffith may or may not have influenced), is mediocre, flatly photographed, and dully conceived.

The plot is a much expanded and complicated reworking of BRUTE FORCE, with the major innovation coming at the end. Victor Mature (Tumak) and Carole Landis (Loana) have replaced Harron and Marsh. They, too, appear in an opening modern sequence. Despite Roach’s apparently recent claim, recorded in Rosenberg and Silverstein’s The Real Tinsel, that One Million B. C. was “A figment of my imagination,” the plot obviously owes much to the Biographs. That the misen-scene is partially Griffith’s is supported by nigh incontrovertible evidence.

We know Griffith had nothing to do with the exteriors because he remained in Hollywood while the troupe worked among the Nevada rocks. It’s definitely a point in his favor since, generally, they are the worst in the film, indifferently shot almost embarrassingly acted, and un-distinguishably edited. But as inferior and un-Griffith-like as the exterior: are, it seems evident that some of the interior shots – perhaps half of which are delicately composed and lit and half prosaic were at least planned by him. Here is the evidence:

The camera movements in the better interiors are intricate an dynamic, and a common introductory shot to the caves in much of the film is a lengthy lateral track through what is supposed to be a wilderness – the shot Griffith had used nearly a decade earlier to bracket Lincoln’s life. What’s more, at least twice, including the opening transition from modern to prehistoric sequences it the film are identically bridged: the camera pans up to the sky, across clouds and down to the rocks. It’s no accident. On December 3, ’39, with Griffith still producing and the film well on its way, the Times reported: “It opens in the present era, on conversation between a scientist and some young people and fades back million years, with the scientist’s voice continuing as commentary. Each sequence thereafter begins with cloud shot, according to Mr. Griffith’s plan; and then the camera pans down to the action.”

That Griffith had a visual influence on the film has been recognized since at least ’71 when Everson wrote in The Films of Hal Roach that “much of the film has a genuine Griffith look and feel to it. The lyrical and powerful lateral tracking shots through the primeval forest are almost unquestionably Griffith’s – certainly in conception if not in execution – and in any case the whole basic story is essentially a remake of… BRUTE FORCE.”

ONE MILLION B. C. ends without a return to a modern sequence and we may never know whether Griffith would have completed the frame as he did in the Biographs. If he had, the familiar circularity of structure would have clearly identified his presence. Yet even without this proof, Griffith still manages to speak to us through most of the film, through its silence.

Although ONE MILLION B. C. has a soundtrack, its characters do not speak intelligibly and much of its power lies in the eloquence of their visual expression in moments of crisis. Incapable of complex language, they communicate, in effect silently, just as so many of Griffith’s earlier characters did. Tumak’s anguish after he strikes his father, his longing for Loana, her reaction, the jealousy of another. Loana’s showing Tumak that food should not be stolen. Tumak’s discovery of joy in teaching others what he knows all these are expressed without words and are thereby more eloquent. Rejection, bravery, fear, love, happiness are shown to be far from maudlin, un-cheapened by banal language. Not since Chaplin’s MODERN TIMES (’36) had a feature film so abandoned talk; for Griffith, the talkless environment allowed him again to make us see.

The basic tension in the film is, like that in BRUTE FORCE, between two tribes, this time Tumak’s carnivorous Rock Tribe and Loana’s resourceful, vegetarian Cave People. As in MAN’S GENESIS, the film’s maker(s) clothe the threatening Rock Tribe in black and the gentler Cave People in what seems to be brown. Tumak’s clothing changes in color as he goes back and forth between tribes.

Both Biographs are dominated by a dialectical sense of human history conflict-caused necessity in them is truly the muse of technological advance. Tools are the measure of species progress. In ONE MILLION B. C. Loana acts as the catalyst-teacher and Tumak becomes increasingly sophisticated in his use of tools. But the film takes a decided step beyond the Biographs in its conclusion.

At the close of MAN’S GENESIS, the young boy decides not to strike the young girl after all, jettisons his stick and walks away with her. At the end of ONE MILLION B. C., after Loana of the Cave People has gentled Tumak of the Rock Tribe, by example making alliance of the once-hostile clans possible, the groups unite to use the earth itself as a tool against a menacing dinosaur. Their tribes have learned to work together against a common environmental threat, and Tumak and Loana, signifying the brutish and the compassionate, walk away with their child, facing what presumably is the rising sun.

Some twenty years before he worked on ONE MILLION B. C., Griffith wrote that in the moviegoing experience, “we look to youth for beauty and often for example. We sit in the twilight of the theater and in terms of youth, upon faces enlarged, we se thoughts that are personal to us, with the privilege of supplying our own messages as they fit our individual experiences in life.

“There we see truth in silence. Silence, then, becomes more than all the tongues of men. And the little star do lead us!”

“We have taken beauty and exchanged it for stilted voices,” Griffith said of talking Hollywood the year before he died. In 1939, he came out of retirement to attempt the resurrection of his cinema. Though his success in ONE MILLION B.C. was at best mixed, it is a film worth watching. For the mark of Griffith is there, the silent eloquence of his own special truth.

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