Intolerance (D.W. Griffith, 1916)
Posted: April 11th, 2009, 1:10 pm
I rewatched Intolerance yesterday, and it reconfirmed the things that frustrated me on my first viewing.
First though, the positives:
1. The scope of the Babylonian sequences is remarkable, those sets are awe-inspiring.
2. The contemporary story is a heck of a melodrama, and would work very well as a standalone film.
3. Constance Talmadge is a lot of fun in her role as the mountain girl, likewise Mae Marsh, and Robert Harron both are excellent in the contemporary story.
4. The climax of the film, with the intercutting across history is both ambitious and well executed.
Now, the negatives:
1. Both the Passion play, and the Huguenot sections are underdeveloped. They get drastically less screen time than the other two stories, and it's to their detriment I felt. The Huguenot especially seemed underwritten, as in one sequence there seems to be a mild distaste between the two parties, and in the next a massacre is planned. Given my unfamiliarity with the story, more explanation would have done wonders.
2. I found the Babylonian sequence somewhat confusing, as the juggling of the political and personal was difficult to follow. This wasn't as big a problem as it could have been, due to the sheer spectacle of the sequences, and Talmadge's buoyant performance.
3. The contemporary story, as great as it is, didn't fit thematically I felt, as it's not really a story of intolerance in the same sense that the other 3 stories are. The other 3 deal explicitly with religious intolerance, while the modern one is mostly about the struggles of poverty.
4. My biggest complaint is simply that the film's message is somewhat disingenuous in the light of The Birth of a Nation, as the film makes no reference to racial intolerance. In fact every single person in the film is white. That to me is problematic, because it seems to demonstrate an ignorance on Griffith's part of the immense impact that racism has had on human history. In fact all of the stories in the film deal simply with intolerance in regards to belief. The message being that we should tolerate what people belief. But no mention of people being persecuted simply for being born a different race.
One could make the case that the film implies tolerance of other races, but I don't think that's strong enough, and in the wake of the scandal of The Birth of a Nation, it's positively dubious to make a film like this and not acknowledge the impact of racial discrimination.
First though, the positives:
1. The scope of the Babylonian sequences is remarkable, those sets are awe-inspiring.
2. The contemporary story is a heck of a melodrama, and would work very well as a standalone film.
3. Constance Talmadge is a lot of fun in her role as the mountain girl, likewise Mae Marsh, and Robert Harron both are excellent in the contemporary story.
4. The climax of the film, with the intercutting across history is both ambitious and well executed.
Now, the negatives:
1. Both the Passion play, and the Huguenot sections are underdeveloped. They get drastically less screen time than the other two stories, and it's to their detriment I felt. The Huguenot especially seemed underwritten, as in one sequence there seems to be a mild distaste between the two parties, and in the next a massacre is planned. Given my unfamiliarity with the story, more explanation would have done wonders.
2. I found the Babylonian sequence somewhat confusing, as the juggling of the political and personal was difficult to follow. This wasn't as big a problem as it could have been, due to the sheer spectacle of the sequences, and Talmadge's buoyant performance.
3. The contemporary story, as great as it is, didn't fit thematically I felt, as it's not really a story of intolerance in the same sense that the other 3 stories are. The other 3 deal explicitly with religious intolerance, while the modern one is mostly about the struggles of poverty.
4. My biggest complaint is simply that the film's message is somewhat disingenuous in the light of The Birth of a Nation, as the film makes no reference to racial intolerance. In fact every single person in the film is white. That to me is problematic, because it seems to demonstrate an ignorance on Griffith's part of the immense impact that racism has had on human history. In fact all of the stories in the film deal simply with intolerance in regards to belief. The message being that we should tolerate what people belief. But no mention of people being persecuted simply for being born a different race.
One could make the case that the film implies tolerance of other races, but I don't think that's strong enough, and in the wake of the scandal of The Birth of a Nation, it's positively dubious to make a film like this and not acknowledge the impact of racial discrimination.