When the idea of Intolerance was preposed, do you think that it was possible that people thought Griffith was insatiable as an artist? After he had seen "Cabiria" (1914) he knew he had some competition to face. After "Birth of a Nation", millions of dollars was spent on sets, and much of those sets would come crashing down weeks after the film's initial release. It is a real shame to me that it couldn't have stayed up to convey to Modern generations how truly amazing the designers and technicians of Hollywood were at the time. I believe there is still an elephant statue in that is up in honour of it, so at least some of its legacy remains.
Now this is a film that I do really appreciate. Die Nibelungen owes its entire life to the film. The story takes a bit of time to start up. Griffith, in response to the animosity that Birth created (rightfully so), wrote a pamphlet on his dislike of censorship. Eventually, he concocted the idea to merge two stories that focused on a central theme, and placed them in a film that spun four separate stories together. The modern story focuses on mill workers and two characters, the Dear One (played by Mae Marsh) and the Boy (played by Robert Harron). The mill workers are getting unpaid and overworked and eventually outrage (the Boy being a part of that). Eventually they move out to town, and the Boy gets involved in crime. He becomes enamoured with the charming Dear One, and they eventually get married and have a child. His past comes back to bite him, and the uplifters of society try to take the baby away from the Dear One
Then you have the Babylonian story which focuses on the siege during the rein of Bellshazzar. It shows you how the marriage market worked back then, and the lack of freedom that women endured, especially Mountain Girl, who is granted her freedom by Bellshazzar. The battles rein on through the night, and it extends way over to Cyrus (you feel Griffith's savagery of war is to denounce it rather than advocate it, which wasn't as clear in Birth as it should have been).
The third story focuses on the Huguenots taking over France, and how they want to thwart the king and queen. The fourth story focuses on Jesus, and the tribulations faced during that time.
Now while some of these stories may sound very antiquated when you hear about them, it is the structure of the film and the majesty that make it so interesting. You see, when the film starts you can see Lillian Gish rocking a cradle with a baby in it... Endlessly. My first thought was that it was strange to not see Gish in a lead role since she was Griffith's main actress back in the day (one of the first relationships of that kind that I can think of). But I find that it was an interesting approach to storytelling and she acts as the plot device that pulls the story back and fourth throughout.
After that, I do find it very hard to access right away. there is no real establishing shots for the Jenkins. At all. So you have to wait for the film to really unfold in its telling of the stories before any of this becomes clearer. So you could go in half way, and either be totally baffled or overawed by the story arc at work here. Thankfully, it does get a lot better in the middle half, and the core stories that interest me are both the Modern and Babylonian stories. The first half of the film is a bit too preachy for my liking, but I can understand that for the time, given how hard it was for films to establish their stories visually. It is one of the reasons why I feel that German cinema was a lot stronger than their American counterparts. They managed to do this better than anyone else. What I like about the Modern story is the Dear One and The Boy. Mae Marsh had such an endearing performance. She was able to emote in a way that connected with me, and I felt her plight when her husband was sentenced and her baby was taken from her. The actions like when she tries to impersonate a hoiti-toiti by walking upright just tugged at my heart strings. You can tell that she wants acceptance like all of us do. Robert Harron is to drama what Fairbanks Sr. Was to comedy. Griffith chaperoned him on sets for a good few years, and his developing abilities as an actor are really tested in this film. He is very hands on, and while his emotional range is lacking, you can feel his desire to change is a real one. His performance harkened back to "The Muskateers of Pig Alley" an early Griffith biograph that proved to be one of the most influential gangster pieces in history.
The Babylonian story did a terrific job at entertaining me with its visuals, and charming characters, while at the same time making me bewildered by the conflicts that they go through. I want these people to be helped, and I want them to succeed.
I want the Mountain Girl to find love and fight for Bellshazzar. The most visual part of the story is, indeed, the Babylonian seige scenes - the tension and terror as they fight from above to stop the seige of their Babylon, and the level of detail in the violence (beheadings and stabbings) are monumental and not that dissimilar to the likes of The Gladiator or Lord of the Rings. Griffith apparently even boasted that nobody died on the set. That's how organic this film really was, and I think where a lot of that tension comes from - the real sense of peril some of these actors must have been in. It's like seeing real soldiers fighting to the end, only these people are real and they are artists in their own right, painting the images of a time far gone as Griffith and Blitzer bring the lens closer to show us these images. Lots of masking like in "Birth" only it is used far more emphatically and to bring attention to the film's key moments like a sword getting taken out for battle.
The other stories were very hard to get into until the climax ensued. "Brown Eyes" was uninteresting as she was basically just a damsel of distress. Catherine De Midici did nothing for me. And while I find the Jesus story ambitious, and the actor was downright perfect for the role, it wasn't until they intercut his crucifixion with the trial that I actually felt his story meant anything.
When the Huguenots took over in the French part of story, I wasn't really sure whose side I was on. But the constant intercutting and montage of time kept it from getting stale, and it made it more than an epic and more than a love story; it was an experience as film should be. Whether that experience was a positive one is up to the viewer and the viewer alone. And for me, it delivers its messages, characters and visuals well enough.
It is a montage of what the times were like in those four decades (in the documentary Kenneth Brownlow, Lillian Gish even said that "what film did this before and since?". And I honestly can't think of any others, so she's probably right), the theme that bonded them, the characters (at least in the Babylonian and Modern day) that act as representations of that, especially the Dear One, The Boy, and Bellshazzar. Even Constance Talmadge, who doesn't do much in the film, just leaves you feeling hopeless for her. The tracking shots, lighting, depth of field, and stage design have really made the film stand above its archaic quirks, and for that, I do feel like it is a gem to behold. However, the Huguenot and Bethlem stories didn't interest me much - it was almost like Griffith developed the Babylonian and Modern stories first (which may be true since they were intended to be separate films before Griffith interwove them) and in between that, his interests in these other stories took place, and he thought that he could shoehorn them into the film itself, which admittedly does make it very interesting in the long run. Andrew Stone once remarked that it is like looking at two TV screens simultaneously. As a result, it can get dreadfully long, and it can be overly preachy.
Still, if you are interested in time, theatrical acting, and the majesty of real sets, then I couldn't recommend this film any higher for you. Trust me when I say that, despite these faults, that hold it back for me, the film's two core stories are truly remarkable, and the telling of the story is enough to sustain one's interest, even when the melodrama seeps through. The fight against the uplifters, the battle of the Huguenots, the siege, and the climax are some of my favourite sequences in silent film, and make the film a testament to Griffith's genius, especially if "Birth" made you feel detached to him. See it in small doses, though, as it can be pretty overwhelming (admittedly anticipating the climax does make a single viewing worthwhile). The bit when the train just stops as the Dear One commandeers is kind of hilarious to me. How does it manage to stop on a dime like that when trains usually need to be a good few meters away to stop safely? Oh well. On my Image entertainment DVD, the distributors describe it as perhaps the greatest film ever made. And, in my opinion, it doesn't even come close to that title nor does it even feel like the greatest silent film ever. It is a flawed masterpiece that celebrates freedom , peace and it pleas against intolerance of the rulings and fates of people at the time and it was probably one of the first instances of eye candy that was ever put on film. Especially the last scene that eerily hardens back to the ending of Birth... Which may be best forgotten about.
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