Abstract

This article looks at D. W. Griffith's early narrative films at Biograph Studios to trace the emergence of the death scene in American cinema, arguing that figures, objects, and vistas provide "registration," or confirmation on screen that dying has concluded. These human and nonhuman witnesses, in effect, represent death multiple times, indeed in multiple places, as a way to compensate for an encounter between the cinema camera and the dying body that is both incomplete and excessive.

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