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| The final battle in Babylon |
Dir: D.W. Griffith
Prod: D.W. Griffith
Scr: D.W. Griffith,
Anita Loos, Hettie Grey Baker, Tod Browning, Mary H. O’Connor, Frank E. Woods
Phot: G.W. “Billy”
Bitzer
Premiere: August 6,
1916
210 mins., original
cut; 197 mins., most existing cuts
Like his other notable epic The Birth of a Nation, D.W. Griffiths’ Intolerance is an eroded monument, one that doesn’t really live in
people’s hearts as Citizen Kane, Casablanca, or The Gold Rush do. In critical estimation, like Nation, it is cherished for its technical achievements but not much
else. It’s one of the first “art” films – a label that usually means – it’s
brilliant but nobody watches it.
Birth of a Nation,
the Civil War saga made by Griffith two years before Intolerance, was a stupendous filmic achievement and huge financial
success. However, it was also grossly racist. This sparked an immense pushback
from African Americans and social progressives across the country. (It is also
cited as singlehanded reviving the white-supremacist terror group, the Ku Klux
Klan.) In one of the supremely ironic moments in American film history,
Griffith conceived of Intolerance in
response to the liberal censure of his openly racist thinking.
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| Christ preaches |
In this project, Griffith literally outdid himself. He
dreamed of going far beyond what anyone else had done with film narrative, and
he succeeded. Intolerance is
structured like an immense musical fugue – different passages that all relate
to a central theme. There are four different narratives – a story set in
ancient Babylon, the story of Christ, a story of the St. Bartholomew’s Day
massacre in 1572 France, in which Catholics slaughtered Protestants, and a
‘modern-day’ story concerning the deadly influence of socially progressive
do-gooders. The result: a film originally nearly four hours long, catnip for
critics but baffling to viewers.
So what makes it so great? It’s Griffith’s idea that not
only was he capable of telling stories this way, but that the viewer is capable
of understanding them, to synthesize the stories and relate them to the central
image, the recurring image of the Eternal Motherhood rocking a cradle,
symbolizing continuity and rebirth (with the Three Fates sitting ominously in
the background). It’s a faith in the audience that Hollywood would never test
again.
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| 'Out of the cradle endlessly rocking . . . ' |
The modern story, “The Mother and the Law,” was in the
planning stages even before The Birth of
a Nation. It has the most solid storyline of the four, and the wooliest
thinking behind it. In it, Griffith indicts the idle rich, the capitalist
bosses, the striking workers, the criminal element, but above all the
horse-faced biddies whose intolerance of the working class’ simple lives and pleasures
leads them to interfere with and destroys the lives of the powerless The titles -- 'Jealous of youth and laughter,' '' We must have laws to make people good" -- lay out his message. All seem
to conspire to deny The Dear One (Mae Marsh) and The Boy (Bobby Harron). happiness,
their baby, and The Boy’s life. (Griffith prefers his characters as archetypes
rather than as rounded personalities.) It a conventional tale, complete with a
race to save The Boy from the gallows.
Racing eagerly alongside and amongst this are the other plot
threads. The Babylonian sequence is by far the best realized visually,
sumptuously designed and innovatively shot (the track-in shot of its mighty,
elaborate setting is the best remembered part of the film). Beside these two,
the French story seems perfunctory, and the Crucifixion almost an afterthought.
The film’s pretentious intertitles don’t help. These, combined with the film’s
visual grandiosity, make Intolerance seem
hopelessly pompous and condescending.
But if you ignore the words, something happens. Every single
frame is carefully and beautifully designed for maximum effect. Every scene is
fully inhabited, with hundreds of actors in character and in harmonious action,
even in the deep background and at the edges of the frame. The four stories are
told with perfect clarity, using close-ups, dolly shots, irises, frame masking,
panoramic sweeps, and more – none used
gratuitously, all subordinated to service of the narrative. (The four
storylines are even given distinctive tints as a visual aid.) The film’s insane
budget of $2.5 million ($47 million today) is sell-used, up there on the
screen. Most astonishing is that the script was unwritten, existing only in
Griffith’s head and explicated to an army of designers, technicians, crew and
cast on a daily basis.
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| Griffith's scenic vocabulary: from panoramic vision |
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| to excruciating closeup |
The most important innovation is the film’s editing. With
musical grace, Griffith cuts brilliantly not only within but between the
stories, maintaining a hypnotic rhythm that imperceptibly speeds up throughout
the film, until all four stories climax in a brilliant rush of imagery that
leaps dizzy into the viewers’ laps. This achievement opened the eyes of
directors and editors around the world. More than 100 years later, it still
looks fresh. No wonder it perplexed many at the time.
Despite the critical praise and success at the box office, Intolerance was doomed never to meet its
costs, and the losses dogged Griffith for the rest of his career. He tinkered
with Intolerance’s editing for years
afterward, even producing stand-alone versions of the modern and Babylonian
stories. Today, when “director’s cuts” are all the rage, no definitive cut of Intolerance exists. He went on to make
other great films such as Way Down East,
Broken Blossoms, and Orphans of the Storm, but never again
was he allowed to on as large a scale. Hollywood’s business model would, with
rare exceptions, no longer tolerate auteurs.
The NFR Project is one
writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry,
in chronological order. Next time: The Curse of Quon Gwon.
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