Direction D.W. Griffith Script Photography Music Actors Costume Design Set Design Editing
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No one was more masterful at the populist form than D.W. Griffith. His movies oozed with raw populism. He told workers that the world really was exploiting them; that they really were being victimized by big fat capitalists. The monopolist was exactly what people feared: an unredeemable blood sucker. Worse yet, they committed crimes and unspeakable acts that went unpunished by authorities and drove honest working people to ruin and suicide. Griffith visualized these fears by casting overweight men as his monopolists, dressing them in tuxedos and top hats (or some other form of fancy clothing), and having them puff away on big cigars. In A Corner In Wheat (1909), a food monopolist who causes hunger and riots by driving up wheat prices to exorbitant levels, falls into a grain elevator and is slowly smothered to death as tons of golden wheat fall on top of him