5. Intolerance (1916)
US 163m Silent BW
Director: D.W. Griffith
Producer: D.W. Griffith
Screenplay: Tod Browning, D.W. Griffith
Photography: G.W. Bitzer, Karl Brown
Music: Joseph Carl Breil, Carl Davis, D.W. Griffith
Cast: Mae Marsh, Robert Harron, Lillian Gish, Gino Corrado, Douglas Fairbanks, King Vidor
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Perhaps in part a retort to those who found fault in the racial politics in The Birth of a Nation (1915), D.W. Griffith was equally concerned to argue against film censorship. This was addressed more directly in the pamflet issued at the time of Intolerance’s exhibition, The Rise and Fall of Free Speech in America. Griffith’s design for this film, which he finalised in the weeks following the release of his earlier epic production, is to juxtapose four stories from different periods of history that illustrate “Love’s struggle throughout the ages”. These include a selection of events from the life of Jesus; a tale from ancient Babylon, whose king is betrayed by those who resent his rejection of religious sectarianism; the story of St. Batholomew’s Day Massacre of French Protestants by King Charles IX of France on the perfidious advice of his mother; and a modern story in which a young boy, wrongly convicted of the murder of a companion, is rescued from execution at the last minute by the intervention of his beloved, who gains a pardon from the governor. These stories are not presented in series. Instead, Griffith cuts from one to another and often introduces suspenseful crosscutting within the stories as well. This revolutionary structure proved too difficult for most filmgoers at the time, who may also have been put off by Intolerance’s length (more than three hours). Griffith may have invested as much as $2 million in the project, but the film never came close to making back its costs, even when recut and released as two separate features, The Fall of Babylon and The Mother and the Law.
No expenses were spared in the impressive historical recreations. The enormous sets for the Babylon story, which long afterward remained a Hollywood landmark, were dressed with 3,000 extras. These production values were equaled by the sumptuous costumes and elaborate crowd scenes of the French story. Though others wrote some title cards, Griffith himself was responsible for the complicated script, which he continued to work on as production progressed. His stock company of actors performed admirably in the various roles. Constance Talmadge is particularly effective as the “Mountain Girl” in love with the ill-fated Prince Belshazzar (Alfred Paget) in the Babylon story, as are Mae Marsh and Bobby Harron as the reunited lovers in the modern story.
As in The Birth of a Nation, Griffith uses the structures of Victorian melodrama to make his political points. Intolerance is examined through the lens of tragic love, which lends emotional energy and pathos to the narratives. In the Babylonian story, Belshazzar and his beloved Attarea (Seena Owen) commit suicide rather than fall into the hands of the victorious Cyrus the Persian (George Siegmann), and in the French story a young couple, he Catholic and she Protestant, are unable to escape the massacre.
Intolerance is a monument to Griffith’s talent for screenwriting, directing actors, designing shots, and editing-a one of a kind masterpiece on a scope and scale that has never been equaled. Meant to persuade, this film exerted more influence on the Soviet revolutionary cinema of Sergei Eisenstein and others than on Griffith’s American contemporaries.
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Information
Internet Movie Database (IMdb)
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RapidShare Links
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http://rapidshare.com/files/64849404/DWGI16.part14.rar
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This article was written by R. Barton Palmer and is included in the book “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die” (Ed. S. J. Schneider)
Copyright © 2006 Quintet Publishing Ltd
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