These notes accompany screenings of D. W. Griffith’s </i>Abraham Lincoln, June 30 and July 1 and 2 in Theater 3.</p>
D. W. Griffith (1874–1948) came to the end of his professional road in 1931. It is now time both to bury and praise him.
He remained an enigma to the end. His final feature, The Struggle (1931), was a passionate plea against alcohol made by a committed, unredeemable, and self-destructive drunk, and if Abraham Lincoln (1930) was intended as some sort of apologia for The Birth of a Nation</a> (1915), the director seems to have missed the point of the outrage he inspired.