Intolerance (D.W. Griffith, 1916)

[myrnaloyisdope]

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.

[bdp]

The original version of Intolerance was much longer - either four or eight hours, depending on the source - but Griffith had to cut it down and the French and Babylonian stories were where most of the cuts happened.

[phil noir]

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.

I too have watched Intolerance recently, and I was interested in your points, MLID. It's my understanding that the modern story was originally a stand alone piece called The Mother and the Law, and that the other three stories were elaborated out of this one. Although these three stories do deal primarily with religious intolerance, I suppose you could argue that all four are linked in that they centre on the intolerance of the established order towards those that mount a challenge to it. In the 'historical' stories, this threat comes from alternative religions, those practised by other races. In order to assert their alternative religion, they would need to seize power. The enemies of Babylon are successful in this; the Huguenots, perceived as a similar threat, are butchered. In the modern story, the intolerance is from the middle and upper classes towards the working classes - the action all develops from the putting down of the factory hands' strike; the characters various descents into criminality stem from this.

I had never noticed that only white faces are featured in Intolerance, MLID (although of course, some of the characters these white actors play would have been from other ethnic groups). If Griffith did not perceive his BOAN racial attitudes as problematic, then I suppose he would have seen no reason to make up for them in Intolerance.

I agree about Constance Talmadge's performance: it is my favourite in the film. Apparently, arriving late on the set one day, she said airily to Griffith, "I am here. Your majesty may begin!"