D.W. Griffith Masterworks Box Set

With more than 20 hours of footage, including four of the director’s best features (”The Birth of a Nation,” ”Intolerance,” ”Broken Blossoms,” and ”Orphans of the Storm”) as well as 23 of his Biograph shorts, the D.W. Griffith Masterworks Box Set is nothing less than a course in film history.

Start with the shorts (shot between 1908 and 1913), which meld narrative urgency with technical experimentation such as the startling use of a close-up in 1912’s ”The Musketeers of Pig Alley.” Then be astonished at the confidence with which Griffith explores cinematic possibilities on a grand scale in 1915’s ”Nation.” (And be shocked by its racist ideology.) All the films have been remastered and look fairly crisp, though a digital cleanup might have eliminated surface scratches.

The extras include a museum exhibition’s worth of film clips, magazine articles, posters, and photos, as well as a fascinating account, told in letters and court transcripts, of the NAACP’s unsuccessful battle to ban a 1922 rerelease of ”Nation” in New York. On the ”Orphans” disc, director Erich von Stroheim’s heartfelt 1948 radio eulogy for Griffith has the added poignance of one discarded artist honoring another.