Intolerance, Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916)
Produced, Directed and Written by David Wark Griffith
178 min; U.S.A.; Black and White (tinted); Silent
The story of the making of Intolerance, Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916) is often told in terms of its place in D.W. Griffith's trajectory from silent shorts like A Corner in Wheat (1909) and The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) to full length feature films; how his first two reeler, Enoch Arden (1911) was released in two parts which infuriated him so much that he considered working as an independent, how the stylistic and extended lengths of the French film d'art and Italian epics propelled him to make Judith of Bethulia (1913), how he combined all he had learned from his career into The Birth of a Nation (1915), and how Intolerance is the most ambitous response to critics ever filmed. However, as Arthur Lennig notes in his excellent article "The Mother and the Law", Griffith's Intolerance "has generally been viewed by cinema historians as a brilliantly edited melodrama but it has seldom been seen as an audacious social protest" (Film History, 17: 404-430). The director's previous socially conscious films are exactly what crossed my mind when I screened the movie today. As much as we understand Intolerance to be an answer to the critics of racism in The Birth of a Nation we also recognize a connection to Griffith's earlier progressive crusades like A Corner in Wheat and The Reformers or The Lost Art of Minding One's Own Business (1913).
According to the information on the Image Entertainment DVD version of the film, Intolerance began as a crime melodrama titled The Mother and the Law in 1914, but, as the June 30, 1915 New York Dramatic Mirror reported, "Griffith...has decided to make it a ten or twelve-reel feature." Griffith's enthusiasm was apparently influenced by newspaper stories about the Ludlow Massacre, and in fact, some shots from the modern sequence of Intolerance mirror actual photographs of the Ludlow Massacre and Bayonne Strike. Meanwhile, the epic scale of the film is influenced by the success of Italian silent extravaganzas. While making Birth of a Nation, Griffith screened Cabiria (1914), which had recreated Rome, Carthage, Egypt and Troy, featured thousands of extras, life sized ships, armies, elephants and battles. Griffith knew that in order for his picture to make the impression he intended he would have to improve upon the accomplishments with this greatest of all Italian silent spectacles. With these ideas in mind I put the DVD in the player, dimmed the lights and prepared myself for something grandiose.
 A page is overcome by boredom at the court of Charles IX. |
According to the program given out at the movie's 1916 New York premiere "the purpose of the production is to trace a universal theme through various periods of history...to parallel the life of the different ages." And, boy, does the film achieves these goals. In the process, however, the viewing experience is fatiguing, to say the least. In both the story of the French court and in the story of Babylon we see someone yawn (photo left). However Griffith intended us to interpret this action in the story, I understand perfectly why they yawned 'cause I was yawing too. This flick spends three backbreaking hours belaboring the point that intolerance has been evident throughout history. Unfortunately Griffith's working method is redundancy. Watching this film is more like a test of will power, concentration and stamina than anything else. I echo the sentiments of Philip Lopate, writing in Cineaste, "I cannot help but think that Intolerance works better on DVD, in some ways, than it does in the theater. For one thing you can portion it out over several viewings." When the "magnificence" of the film becomes exhausting, Lopate suggests, "just hit the Pause button, gratefully saving its conclusion for the next night" ("D.W. Griffith Masterworks." Cineaste 28, no 3 (Summer 2003): 50). Lopate's observations are insightful (though I'll wager he enjoyed the viewing experience only because he was able to get a full night's sleep between sessions), yet I can't help but question who wants to sits through a film that is "exhausting" not once but twice?
What makes the experience so trying is that the theme is told through a fully developed narrative not once but four times. In Intolerance four separate stories from four different periods of history, "show how hatred and intolerance, through the ages, have battled against love and charity." Titles cards explain that "our play turns from one of the four stories to another, as the common theme unfolds," as though the audience might not comprehend the sudden leaps in time and space. The first story tells of intolerant progressive reformers "banded together for the 'uplift' of humanity." The second story, set in ancient Jerusalem, tells of "an ancient people, whose lives, though far away from ours, run parallel in their hopes and perplexities." The third story takes place in 1572 in Paris, "a hotbed of intolerance." The fourth story unfolds in ancient Babylon of 539 B.C.E., the time of Belshazzar.
 The "Virgins of the sacred fire of life" recline in the "Love Temple." |
Griffith is an acknowledged master filmmaker and so the viewing experience need not be so trying. Griffith doesn't need four full stories to preach his message. He doesn't need to painfully reuse the image of the rocking cradle of civilization over and over and over and over and...by the time we get to the story of Jesus we've surely gotten Griffith's message yet that's when we realize that the picture is only half over and this grueling sermonizing is only going to continue. I don't care how many gratuitous shots of partially nude virgins (photo right) he places in the middle of his lecture, it still gets boring. Epics are long, and I expected Intolerance to be the longest, but it doesn't have to feel long. By contrast, Cabira compels us to take pleasure in an unfolding epic as tales of the title character's rescue and the various subplots are subsumed into the larger tale of history. Meanwhile, Intolerance invites us to watch some of the most compelling images yet photographed while beating us over the head with the same message the whole time. I can't help but notice the similarity between this experience and the working methods of the progressive reformers that Griffith protested in his previous filmThe Reformers or The Lost Art of Minding One's Own Business.
Still, I'm in awe of the visual triumphs of Griffith and cinematographer G.W. Bitzer as well as the extraordinary achievements in set design (Set Designer R. Ellis Wales collected a wealth of books about the ancient Near East to ensure the most accurate representation of the past reached the screen. However, Griffith would allow his own vision to supersede such research when the two disagreed, as in the case of elephant sculptures which didn't exist in the sources but he put them in anyway) and costuming of the picture. If only Griffith would relax and let us enjoy the show. I'm in agreement with a reviewer who wrote about the epic picture in the September 6, 1916 issue of the New York Times:
It is the Babylonian portion of the film that will commend it to the great public. These pictures of the walls of Babylon...the great gates throned with picturesque canvases, the myriad slaves and dancing girls, and the siege and fall of the city are indeed masterpieces of the cinema. They are so splendid that it seems a pity the story was not deleted!
 The prisoners of the fires of intolerance appeal for peace forevermore. |
The visual language Griffith uses in the picture...the controlled use of close-up for maximum impact, limiting of our visual range through the narrow iris, the exploration of screen depth with tracking and dolly shots, intuitive editing, cross-cutting through both time and space, tinting for specific effects, tightly filmed quiet moments juxtaposed with wide shot battle sequences that explode into flaming destruction, the use of montage in the final sequence...is nearly beyond reproach. What's more, the size and scale of the production still maintain the power to marvel a modern viewer. Taken separately, the individual tales of the four time periods are interesting and enjoyable. But, it's Griffith's inability to relax his grip on his overarching theme of this picture even after it has been established and his inability to allow us to breathe in the cinematic delights and just enjoy this magnificient feature that finally becomes intolerable. I don't deny the author his social protest, A Corner in Wheat is an early silent short favorite of mine. But here the warning and lesson is so repetitious and overbearing that the result is an exhausting viewing experience. We get your point already, Mr. Griffith, intolerance has been with us throughout the ages but we can overcome it with perfect love. Now let us up we've had enough.
This essay written by Thom Ryan
© 2006 Thom Ryan Some rights reserved
A bit more info on this film I found while scanning over the December 10, 1916 New York Times. Griffith explains why he prefers black and white to perfecting a color process, and why he used color tinting in Intolerance:
Posted by: Thom | 06 November 2006 at 09:32 PM
As if you need reminding...
Final reminder of the Alfred Hitchcock Blog-A-Thon on November 15th over @ www.pasquish.blogspot.com!
Posted by: Squish | 10 November 2006 at 07:45 PM
That 10 storey set of Babylon became one of the permanent Hollywood museum fixtures for decades. That chapter, with 3000 extras is so magnificently impressive, and on top of that there's a siege of the town, obviously the inspiration for the final battle of the Lord of the Rings saga. Mindblowing. However you are correct. As silent films go, I see the impact, but as entertainment value, I would never dare suggest that anyone see this.
Posted by: Squish | 17 November 2006 at 11:23 AM
I hadn't thought of the LOTR siege warfare connection. It seems obvious now. :P Thanks, S. Too bad that the Babylon set doesn't still exist. This flick was the mega-movie I was expecting it to be. It seems like Griffith put everything he'd learned from the shorts and features into this one epic to end all epics..too bad he's overzealous about teaching a lesson in it. Constructing a masterwork like this seems lesson enough.
Posted by: Thom | 17 November 2006 at 01:36 PM
She doesn't appear often in the film, but have your read Lillian Gish's book Me and Mr. Griffith?
Posted by: scottlord | 23 January 2008 at 10:33 PM
No I haven't Scottlord. Does the book contain her reminiscences of working on this motion picture?
Posted by: Thom | 24 January 2008 at 08:44 AM