![]() |
Image credit: Amazon |
The film explores tragedy fuelled by intolerance and the
struggles of love through the ages over the course of four stories. A selection
of events from the life of Jesus, a tale from Babylon in which a king is
betrayed by those against his rejection of sectarianism, the story of the St
Bartholemew’s Day Massacre of French Protestants, and a modern melodrama in
which a young man is wrongly convicted of murder.
While critically hailed as a masterpiece today, thanks to
its epic scale and ahead-if-its-time editing, Intolerance is also
considered an epic disaster and flop in Hollywood’s history; (ironically)
thanks to its epic scale and ahead-if-its-time editing.
Riding high off the success of Birth of a Nation,
it’s believed that Griffith made this epic doom-and-gloom saga of tragic love
stories as something of a retort to the backlash he received regarding the
racial politics in Birth. Indeed, he released a pamphlet entitled ‘The
Rise and Fall of Free Speech in America’ to coincide with Intolerance’s
release, arguing against film censorship. And it certainly is a film that
forces audiences to look at some hard truths about human behaviour. Everything
from conspiracy, to betrayal, to incredible violence, to jealousy, to a
plethora of prejudices is depicted.
While the audience of the time struggled with the random
time-jumping and crosscutting between stories, the modern audience – especially
feminist- will cringe at the questionable ‘love’ stories, the rough treatment
of women on screen, and the fact that none of the young heroines are given
names.
Then there is the sheer size of the thing. The film is
famous for having had a couple of million invested in it to make a lavish
spectacle: the enormous sets for the Babylon sequences are monumental and very
impressive, as well as the elaborate costumes for the both the Babylon story
and the French period drama. Add to this a herd of elephants, camels,
catapults, and what appears to be a flame-throwing Babylonian tank, it’s a very
elaborate visual feast that sadly failed to make back its costs.
![]() |
Image credit: Amazon |
The performances are captivating, if you can keep track of who everyone is, and this is good because both original and contemporary audiences immediately baulk at the thought of sitting down for that long: the film’s runtime is 3 hours. While the pacing of the first half of the film can stretch and feel doughy, the climactic final act proves to be quite nail-bitingly dramatic and exciting.
There are certainly a number of things about Intolerance
that make it a landmark piece of Hollywood history, but I don’t think that the
‘genius’ of D. W. Griffith stands the test of time. Like Metropolis –
another piece of extravagant cinema- you need to really psych yourself up to
get through this endurance trial of a film.
Director: D. W. Griffith, 1916
Cast: Spottiswoode Aitken, Mary Alden, Frank Bennett,
Barney Bernard, Monte Blue, Lucille Browne, Tod Browning, William H. Brown,
Edmund Burns, William E. Cassidy, Elmer Clifton, Miriam Cooper, Jack Cosgrove,
Josephine Crowell, Dore Davidson, Sam De Grasse, Edward Dillon, Pearl Elmore,
Lillian Gish, Ruth Handforth, Robert Harron, Joseph Henabery, Chandler House, Lloyd
Ingraham, W. E. Lawrence, Ralph Lewis, Vera Lewis, Elmo Lincoln, Walter Long,
Mrs. Arthur Mackley, Tully Marhsall, Mae Marsh, Marguerite Marsh, John P.
McCarthy, A.W. McClure, Seena Owen, Alfred Paget, Eugene Pallette, Georgia
Pearce, Billy Quirk, Wallace Reid, Allan Sears, George Siegmann, Maxfield Stanley,
Carl Stockdale, Madame Sul-Te-Wan, Constance Talmadge, F.A. Turner, W.S. Van
Dyke, Guenther von Ritzau, Erich von Stroheim, George Walsh, Eleanor
Washington, Margery Wilson, & Tom Wilson
No comments:
Post a Comment