The Female of the Species is one of many remarkable Biograph shorts from the year 1912, and certainly represents a great leap forward in screen acting and direction of actors.
Griffith temporarily abandons his own rule of three-quarter length shots, with everyone cut off below the knees, instead framing the actors from the waist up in most shots. The crucial difference here is that the faces become much clearer, and the physical acting becomes that much less important. It's my belief that a large part of directing of performances comes from where you place the camera. Actors will play to the camera, so if they know their face is being focused on they will act with it. Griffith obviously cast the actors here for their faces too. Dorothy Bernard's face is a picture of distraught innocence, and Claire McDowell proves particularly good at conveying contempt. It's also interesting to note how the minor characters the Indian family and the two cowboys are filmed in Griffith's more familiar mid-shot, so they don't intrude upon the drama of faces going on between the three leads.
Everything else is left to Griffith's usual care in construction. The psychological impact of his staging of shots is important here. For the bulk of the film the actors are moving towards us all the better to see those faces, of course, but the fact that they are constantly advancing upon the audience gives a more menacing quality to the film. In the final shot, the storyline resolved, they walk away from us, giving a sense of change and completion. Griffith was also by now adept at balancing and pacing a story. For example, he adds a moment of frantic action two-thirds of the way through, when the Indian father is shot. Griffith knows that the very slow pace of the film couldn't be maintained without the audience becoming bored, no matter how engrossing the acting is, so it was necessary to give the pace a little boost at that point.
From this point on, faces would become increasingly important in Griffith's work. He had been using close-ups for a while, but they were mostly functional ones, showing us objects or actions in more detail. Now, he was on the verge of showing how close-ups of faces could be used for emotional and psychological impact.