Intolerance
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Movie Reviews of Intolerance
Movie Review: One of the Best movies EVER made: An absolute MUSE see
Summary: 5 Stars
Intolerance is an incredible masterpiece. It truly deserves a detailed description/commentary to encourage viewing, for it is a movie that should be required viewing for all educated people, not just film enthusiasts, and should be ranked amongst the TOP five movies ever made in America. It has been compared by critics to masterpieces in other arts, as it should, because it is the work of a creative genius and a true work of art.
It should also be watched several times, as it is not only very enjoyable on further viewings, but necessary in order to fully appreciate the complexity and beauty of the film. There are also several versions aside from this one, which I have not seen, but would be curious to explore, as they may have additional or different footage.
Griffith was heavily influenced by two movies that preceeded his creation, an Italian production form 1914 "Cabiria" and "The Last Days of Pompeii" (Caserini version, 1913) Both had excerpts in this disc under the special features, which I watched after the movie and found most helpful in understanding Griffith's vision.
"Intolerance" encompasses four different stories tied together by the theme of intolerance, with first place given to religious intolerance. From the beginning, the film jumps from one to the other of the stories (and this was one of the great innovations that it introduced) with the interlocking image of a woman by the cradle representing the passage of the generations (Lillian Gish). I have read that the original footage was eight hours long and that Ms. Gish said it should have been shown as was. After seeing this version, which is almost three hours, I would agree to say that it would be probably an interesting experience, but not as effective an impression.
The stories are in historical order: 1-The Fall of Babylon to Cyrus the Great 2-The story of Christ, concentrated to some highlights 3- Massacre of St. Bartholomew in 16th Century France 3- A Contemporary story of class struggle and injustice.
The most developed is the Contemporary tale which is a full feature, followed by the Babylonian tale which is almost a full feature and then the more reduced Huguenot and Christ stories.
What is incredible about this movie is how well it holds together, given the daunting task of four different plots, that even today after almost a full century of movie-watching experience, remains extraordinary.
However the difficulty in maintaining a strong story line is what probably accounts for the film's commercial failure.
Even in our age of text messages and video clips there are not that many people out there comfortable spanning and understanding four totally different time periods simultaneously. Needless to say, even with the notes that were interjected in the titles, it would also be very hard to follow the Babylonian and St. Bartholomew plots without some background information. The Christ story would be daunting for non-Christian viewers as it is very barely sketched and assumes the viewer knows it well.
The amazing discovery for me was that as far as historical films is concerned, we have been decaying since, as I have never seen anything that approximates his evocation of the times depicted here. In the case of the French court, it is almost as if Griffith had ressurected the players from portraits, so strong is the resemblance between actors and historical figures. The extraordinary refinement in understanding the decoration and costumes is without precedent in American cinema, for it shows how the court integrated elements from the past (medieval tapestries for instance) in their living interiors, and it is these elements that disappear completely form later Hollywood historical movies when period films meant going into that particular epoch at the expense of all others and exclusively showing 'the historical' present, at best, and at worst recreating the period in an exagerated or ridiculous manner that made no sense at all.
The attention to detail is unsurpassed, particularly in the Babylonian scenes where the recreation of architecture, interiors, war scenes an elaborate crowd coordination is baffling. Not all of it is accurate, granted, (the elephant columns for example) but the general effect most definitly is, to the point where at times we almost feel we are witnessing a documentary.
The film is also very progressive and advanced for its time in many unsuspecting ways, and it also points out how contemporary mores are actually more provincial that we would like to acknowledge: The harem scenes in Babylon would probably get an X-rating today, for although there is nothing shown that is lewd, there is certainly a strong erotic languor and an accurate depiction of physical desire that is strongly suggested by the actors and actresses in their half nakedness. These would get at least an R now, and it makes one clearly understand how film rating is really a vestige of an archaic censorship that is completely out of place in contemporary society.
More importantly, the depiction of a pagan universe is accurate in portraying a lack of prejudice for gay sexuality, is also suggested here in harem scenes between the beautiful women of the king. Furthermore, the parting kiss between Belshazzar and his general, close to the end of the invasion scene, would be unthinkable in a popular blockbuster of today,where producers would be worrying endlessly about the loss of revenue that could occur from possible criticism. Yet in the film it is not only totally natural as a farewell salutation, but charged with a powerful homoerotic beauty that is an integral part of the pagan reality that Christian culture has been trying to obliterate, distort or hide for centuries.
The movie is amongst many things, an excellent attack on religious hypocrisy and fanaticism, and as such it is no wonder it would be controversial. To paraphrase the great Moliere, who discovered so many centuries ago, when he staged his Tartuffe, a play about a pious hypocrite, and found out how powerful and malicious this crowd could be, he proceeded to note in the introduction to the published edition "hypocrites are most prone to furiously attact my play, because they will lose their jobs if they are exposed" This exposé on hypocrites, is best illustrated in the contemporary tale, where a group of hideous and obviously frustrated and embittered women set out on a mission to "elevate" the poor and are effective only in diminishing their quality of life, and also in causing lower pay for the workers, strikes and other negative effects, not to mention taking away the child of our heroine and confining the baby to an institution, for no other valid reason than their inaccurate, yet prejudiced perception of her. Griffith had the courage to attack this vermin and shows he is a master at depicting the shades and nuances of these creatures that destroy while trying "to do good" which is to them, mostly an entertainment and/or an outlet for their perverse energy and vanity.
I disagree with those who consider Griffith sentimental. He depicts affection and feelings accurately within the conventions of his time, which were still for the most part, those of stage actors in the 19th Century. Part of the greatness of the movie is precisely in opening the window to the complexity of human existance at any point in history through the way those feelings are depicted.
There is as much tenderness and love in the relationship between Belshazzar and his princess as there is hatred and ambition in the High Priest. The malice of the intriguing French court is contrasted with the purity and innocence of the young girl "Brown eyes', and the vice and criminality of The Musketeer of the People and his love interest, who shoots him in a fit of jealousy, is a strong contrast to The Boy and The Dear One.
Finally it should be noted that Griffith was prophetic in his understanding of social tendencies in America. Within three years of the release of the movie, America entered the fiasco of prohibition, which never eradicated alcoholism or its societal effects, yet was extremely successful at enriching, developing and promoting organized crime.
Movie Review: Cut and paste... still unforgettable...
Summary: 5 Stars
While I'm still on a D.W.Griffith roll,decided to continue with his next movie "Intolerance" supposedly made as reaction to criticism of his previous work.
Because "Birth of the Nation" was such a huge success,no expenses were spared in financing what must be the biggest movie extravaganza of all times - if you think mass scenes in 1915. masterpiece were huge,think again - this time Griffith topped himself with enormous sets towering over Hollywood and mass scenes were breath-taking in scope and dimensions - where today movie makers simply use computer animation and tricks to create illusion of thousands,Griffith literally used thousands of actors to re-act ancient Babylon (and that was just one part of the story).
The vision is fine,but unfortunately Griffith bite more than he could chew this time - you might even call it megalomanic - instead of focusing on one story,he goes simultaneously into four different periods in history to hammer home his idea that human nature basically never changes. What could easily have been four movies he presents as four chapters - its like "Birth of the Nation" times four - it ended up being such a long saga that audience at the times were not prepared to watch it and although it wasn't disaster,it could never re-pay finances invested in its realization,therefore Griffith was forced to abandon such a large projects and focus on relatively smaller-scale stories without battlefields,horses,elephants and trains running. Who knows how he felt about it,but we can guess he never gave up in his desire to prove brilliance of this movie to the world and later played with it forever,shortened it,re-edited everything,cut into pieces and glued again,in the process some parts were forever lost and what we can see today is similar to ancient sculpture broken into pieces and somehow put together by archeologists who can only guess about its real appearance.
Four stories follow characters in modern time,ancient Babylon,Jerusalem and 16. century Paris - all four have spectacular mass scenes,thousands of actors and sets that were inspired by famous paintings (for example,the morning after St.Bartholomew massacre Queen Catherine de Medici stands at the gates of Louvre among slaughtered corpses of huguenots,this scene actually faithfully re-acts historical painting). Unfortunately,because of film re-editing,cuts and later patchwork, stories set in Jerusalem and Paris are all but lost (we get only several tantalizing glimpses into what they looked like) and what was left are stories set in Babylon and modern times,still exciting enough as they were but clearly these are pieces of broken mirror that nobody was able to put together again.
Personally I found the movie way overlong and had to stop at certain point and watch the rest another time (contemporary audience in 1916. must have been overwhelmed with all this) but after few days when I decided to see the rest,I actually enjoyed it very much and had to re-think my opinion. Even in this brutally edited version it still has huge appeal,excellent actors,brilliant historical costumes and lots of visual details to enjoy - I don't see how these four stories could have been more shortened (if he tried to make it into 2-hours movie it would be simply incomprehensible) so my conclusion is - five stars all the way,no matter how shortened or tampered with. I found myself thinking about the movie days after I watched it,so it truly left strong impression on me.
Is it better than "Birth of the Nation"? Well,it's oranges and apples - "Birth" was first and covered just one story,here we have four. "Intolerance" ended up being broken into hundred pieces while "Birth" survives relatively intact. But if you ask me,"Intolerance" is unforgettable while "Birth" comes as racist embarrassment today,something we have to admit but don't want to really remember. So,five stars for "Intolerance".
Movie Review: Maybe the most representative D.W. Griffith film
Summary: 5 Stars
D.W. Griffith is commonly known as the man who revolutionized movies and movie storytelling. His seminal 1915 epic THE BIRTH OF A NATION was also, in many ways, the birth of movies as an art form and as a business. Always the technical innovator, Griffith was the first to experiment with film technique in order to enhance his storytelling, and his innovations---medium close-ups, crosscutting, etc.---are indispensable to moviemakers today.
But there is more to Griffith than technical innovation, and there are parts of his 1916 silent epic INTOLERANCE that---more so than in THE BIRTH OF A NATION---remind me of some of his old Biograph shorts, in its intimate scale, pacifism, and concern for the human condition. As the main director at the old Biograph film company, Griffith was known for making shorts that placed marginalized working-class folks at the dramatic center of things, and treating his relatively lower-class characters with sensitivity and respect. That sensibility resurfaces vividly in one of the four stories in INTOLERANCE, involving the Dear One (Mae Marsh), whose husband is wrongly jailed, and whose baby is taken away by misguided Uplifters who consider her a bad mother. There's no derision in Griffith's attitude toward the working-class characters in this modern story: if anything, Griffith spouts his venom at the ruthless employers and reformers, who either care nothing for their workers or never take working class problems seriously, in spite of their agreeable-on-the-surface rhetoric.
But that is just one story out of four that Griffith tries to tell in one 3-hour cinematic package in INTOLERANCE. The other stories show Griffith trying to overreach, to go beyond what he achieved in THE BIRTH OF A NATION and tell even grander stories, and explore the grander theme of "love's struggle through the ages."
That's why I think INTOLERANCE is, even more than THE BIRTH OF A NATION, the most representative film of D.W. Griffith: it has all the technical and narrative experimentation that he attempts in NATION, but it is also balanced with compelling personal drama of the type that he made as a Biograph director (and which was perhaps stunted by the racist elements in NATION).
It's not perfect---not at all. Griffith's attempt at telling four stories at once doesn't necessarily work; through his editing, he tries to cleverly connect the stories together smoothly, but in the end it still comes off as four stories told at once. And I can't really take INTOLERANCE seriously as a deep exploration of intolerance through the centuries, since none of the stories ever really rise above melodrama, and Griffith gets awfully preachy with his message at times. And yet there are still things to marvel at here: the awesome siege of Babylon, the last-minute rescues at the film's climax, Griffith's flexible use of the squarish frame. It may be trite as a message movie, but it's certainly exhilarating to watch as one of the great follies of American movies.
INTOLERANCE was meant to be a response to the cries of racism that haunted the popular success of THE BIRTH OF A NATION. Unfortunately, it was so demanding for audiences in 1916 that it became a great failure, and Griffith never really recovered from it. However, history tells a different story: INTOLERANCE lives on to this day as a movie as seminal in its importance in movie history as NATION, and it is still as awe-inspiring as ever in its sheer ambition. This is required viewing for any self-respecting film buff.
Movie Review: D.W. Griffith and INTOLERANCE In The 21st Century.
Summary: 5 Stars
Imagine that Steven Spielberg was no longer directing movies and that WAR OF THE WORLDS would be the one film he is remembered for. Would that be a fair assessment of his career? Absolutely not but that is what has happened to cinema pioneer D.W. Griffith. The film he is remembered for today is the 1915 BIRTH OF A NATION which was the first important American epic. Unfortunately its source material THE CLANSMAN (the film's original title) is a Southern view of the Civil War which glorifies the Ku Klux Klan and is extremely racist (although toned down considerably from the book by Thomas Dixon). Griffith made 34 feature films and over 400 shorts between 1908 and 1931. In the overwhelming majority of these he is a social progressive tackling such issues as poverty, political corruption, worker exploitation and interracial romance. He even made an anti-Klan film THE ROSE OF KENTUCKY back in 1912.
I mention all of this because in this current climate of political correctness Griffith is being judged and censured on the basis of one film as opposed to his whole body of work and the damage being done to his reputation is still going on. In the recent Oscar nominated film JUNEBUG, one of the characters is a Southern racist Civil War painter who happens to be named David Wark (the D.W. in Griffith's name).
INTOLERANCE, the follow-up to NATION, was the most ambitious and expensive film ever made up to that point (1916) and forever changed the way that movies would be made after it. Because of the lifesize sets of Ancient Babylon and the thousands of extras employed, the movie would cost over $500 million to remake today. Its central theme shows how intolerance through the ages breeds anger, anger then breeds repression and repression breeds more intolerance. Set in four different historical time periods (including then present day 1916), the film shifts back and forth from story to story with ever increasing frequency until it reaches its dramatic climax followed by a fanciful epilogue of what the world would be like if we could only banish our fear and hatred. Virtually every visual film technique you can think of appeared in this film inspiring filmmakers around the world who quickly followed suit. After 90 years it still remains a wonder to be seen.
There are several different versions of INTOLERANCE currently available on DVD. This Kino edition is the most complete while the Image edition follows Griffith's reissue wishes for the film. AVOID at all costs all the low budget DVDs of this cinematic milestone as they are of inferior visual quality and have uncoordinated sound accompaniment. It's time once again to give D.W. Griffith his due and this is the place to start. Follow this up with his BIOGRAPH shorts and then some of his features such as BROKEN BLOSSOMS or SALLY OF THE SAWDUST and see just what he was capable of. Griffith's wheel of fortune has come full circle a number of times and will continue to do so. That is the measure of a true artist. Remember to look for the Kino or Image DVD versions of his films. They cost a lot more but like Criterion DVDs they are loaded with extras and are more than worth it.
Movie Review: ALMOST TOO BIG TO DESCRIBE & TOO HEAVY TO FULLY APPRECIATE
Summary: 5 Stars
IN A NUTSHELL: THE THEME IS SIMPLE -- THE STORIES ARE ANYTHING BUT SIMPLE!
"Intolerance" is presented via a cross-cutting of the four tales of injustice: the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 16th century France, the crucifixion of Christ, a modern workers' strike, and a story of ancient Babylon.
WHAT ITS ALL ABOUT: THE EFFECT OF INTOLERANCE
To viewers of modern films, such as myself, following and comprehending "Intolerance" is a formidable task. We are so used to dialogue, modern symbolism, and tight editing that this film, difficult to appreciate and understand in 1916, may be even more difficult to decipher today.
Nevertheless, there is no shortage of powerful, gut-wrenching images that are properly developed, played-out, and delivered to four dramatic climaxes.
As a result, it is difficult not to think about the meaning of "Intolerance" which probably transcends G.W. Griffith's intentions. Unfortunately, as cinema entertainment goes, this was NOT a winner at the box-office, and the critics view of the film was very mixed.
BOTTOM LINE: Didactic --- but emotionally Super-Potent!
Very heavy fare for viewing, as it is long, melo-dramatic, a little difficult to follow, silent except for captions and score, and totally didactic. Nevertheless, it is emotionally super-potent. I get the point most strongly, and find myself examining my own behavior and evaluating it on the basis of my own intolerance since seeing this film.
ABOUT THE DVD: "The Kino Video DVD"
----- *-"Master from 35mm archive elements"
----- *-Stereo Score by Joseph Turrin
----- *-Introduction by Orson Welles
This film is 90 years old. That right ---- 90! Considering its age it plays incredibly well. This particular edition is 197 minutes long and the captions are on long enough for anyone to read them [for a change]!
ALSO SUGGESTED: ACCLAIMED EARLY SILENT FILMS OF G.W. GRIFFITH
Hearts of the World (1918, D.W. Griffith)
Broken Blossoms (1919, D.W. Griffith)
The Birth of a Nation (1915, D.W. Griffith)
Way Down East (1920, D.W. Griffith)
The White Rose (1923, D.W. Griffith)
One Exciting Night (1922, D.W. Griffith)
The Greatest Thing in Life (1918, D.W. Griffith)