Edgar Allan Poe

D.W. Griffith's one-reel life of Poe, made at Biograph in 1909 with Herbert Yost as the poet and Linda Arvidson (Griffith's wife) as Virginia. Poe writes "The Raven" to pay for medicine; Virginia dies anyway. It is less a biography than a single image Griffith would keep returning to: the artist who cannot save the woman in the next room. Twelve minutes, painted backdrops, a raven that is a prop. The first American film about a writer that treats writing as work, not as a title card.