The Birth of a Nation caused a sensation in 1915. Far longer and more ambitious than previous features, the film changed the way that people perceived motion pictures. They were no longer simply a harmless form of entertainment. They could educate, enlighten, and propagandize. They could force us to examine our beliefs and prejudices.
D.W. Griffith was the director of The Birth of a Nation. While the film was by far the greatest commercial success of the era, it also suffered from a backlash. Griffith was stung by charges that he had glorified the Ku Klux Klan, and was racist in his characterization of African Americans.
Griffith's next feature was Intolerance. Even longer, costlier and more ambitious than The Birth of a Nation, its theme was the human suffering caused by intolerance throughout the ages. Perhaps Griffith intended the film to be an answer to his critics; proof that he was against hatred and bigotry.
Or perhaps he was simply becoming more pretentious. Griffith spent half a million dollars making Intolerance, a fortune in those days. The three hour epic was a box office failure, finally curbing the ambitions of Griffith. Future films from his studio would be more modest in scope.
One problem with Intolerance was its title. It just doesn't market very well, suggesting a lecture to the audience. Something more lurid was required, such as "The Hand That Punishes" or "The Reign of Terror". Seriously, I believe that much of the vast difference between the box offices of The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance was due to their titles. The former sounds more compelling.
Like all of D.W. Griffith's features from the teens, Intolerance has been considered to be an outstanding film since its release. Like Cecil B. DeMille, Griffith knew how to put on a show. Ironically, while Griffith was highly innovative and imaginative, he had great flaws as both a director and a storyteller.
An unintentional campiness is present in the action scenes. For the dramatic scenes, he leans heavily towards the sentimental. He often resorts to familiar plots of damsels in distress. There is a bad guy after her, there is a hero to save her. For Griffith, youth, beauty, and virginity constitute a woman's best assets. He seems misogynistic towards older women. In Intolerance, they are humorless busybodies, out to ruin everyone's fun.
Intolerance crosscuts between four different storylines. They are linked by an often repeated scene of Lillian Gish rocking a baby in a crib. The stories represent intolerance through the ages.
The first story is set in contemporary America. Mean-spirited spinsters cause the unemployment of The Boy (Robert Harron), who turns to organized crime. He falls in love with saintly The Dear One (Mae Marsh), who both marries and (miraculously) reforms him. Unluckily, The Boy has crimes of larceny and then murder trumped up against him, and is condemned to death. But will a last minute appeal to the Governor save his neck? The suspense is gripping!
Two other stories get short shrift. Perhaps they were edited down to make the film's length more palatable to the kidneys. One story shows Jesus Christ in his teachings and persecution. Unlike Ben-Hur (1926), the face of Christ is shown. A third story has murderous Catholic schemers surrounding the King Charles IX of France (Frank Bennett), resulting in a slaughter of the Protestant Huguenots. Among the Huguenots is young, innocent Brown Eyes (Margery Wilson).
The fourth story is set in Ancient Babylon. The walls of the great city are threatened by Cyrus the Persian (George Siegmann). Good King Belshazzar (Alfred Paget) of Babylon is opposed by the high priest of Bel (Tully Marshall), a religious zealot. The Mountain Girl (Constance Talmadge) is a Xena-like tomboy who fights valiantly for her king.
The Babylon story is easily the most entertaining. The Mountain Girl is such an unGriffithian heroine, scornful and swaggering. She is courageous in a physical, extroverted manner. She is an enormous improvement over the usual pretty, virtuous wallflower, here represented by Brown Eyes and The Dear One.
Silent comic Buster Keaton must have seen the unintentional humor of Intolerance. He named a lovestruck cow "Brown Eyes" in Go West (1925). The Three Ages (1923) mocked the crosscutting pretentiousness of Intolerance.
You will read elsewhere that Intolerance is among the greatest films ever made, and Griffith's masterpiece. If ambition equated directly to quality, I would have to agree. But it takes a full hour to comprehend the various storylines and characters. The sets for Babylon are spectacular, but the acting and character development is (excepting The Mountain Girl) ordinary throughout. Intolerance remains the grand failure that contemporary audiences judged it to me. While we may admire the technique, the results are a different matter. (61/100)
D.W. Griffith's towering epic of man's inhumanity to man throughout the ages, "Intolerance" is considered the greatest film of the silent era and perh...More at HotMovieSale.com
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