Gangs connects to the roots of American Cinema back to D.W. Griffith

Rating: Null/10 (21 December 2002)

Amazing that many California reviewers are ignorant of film history...then again maybe not since the industry started on the East Coast. New York and New Jersey were centers of US film production prior to Hollywood. In fact, D.W. Griffith, as a director for Biograph, worked with cameraman Billy Bitzer in about 500 Biograph films shot mostly in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and on location in New York City from roughly 1908-1913. Scorsese's work in Gangs of New York serves as a link to the work of Griffith (see "The Musketeers of Pig Alley" shot on location on New York's Lower East Side circa 1912). Gangs is a seminal work of an American Master....Martin Scorsese.