Intolerance
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Synopsis
Sometime during the shooting of the landmark The Birth of a Nation, filmmaker D.W. Griffith probably wondered how he could top himself. In 1916, he showed how, with the awesome Intolerance. The film began humbly enough as a medium-budget feature entitled The Mother and the Law, wherein the lives of a poor but happily married couple are disrupted by the misguided interference of a "social reform" group. A series of unfortunate circumstances culminates in the husband's being sentenced to the gallows, a fate averted by a nick-of-time rescue engineered by his wife. In the wake of the protests attending the racist content of The Birth of a Nation, Griffith wanted to demonstrate the dangers of intolerance. The Mother and the Law filled the bill to some extent, but it just wasn't "big" enough to suit his purposes. Thus, using The Mother and the Law as merely the base of the film, Griffith added three more plotlines and expanded his cinematic thesis to epic proportions. The four separate stories of Intolerance are symbolically linked by Lillian Gish as the Woman Who Rocks the Cradle ("uniter of the here and hereafter"). The "Modern Story" is essentially The Mother and the Law; the…
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Details
Language: Silent
Year of production: 1916
Length: 178 min
Country: United States
Suggested by:
Baxter Martin
Directors:
Producers:
Actors:
- The Woman Who Rocks the Cradle
Mae Marsh
- The Dear One
Robert Harron
- The Boy
Miriam Cooper
- The Friendless One
Walter Long
- The Musketeer of the Slums
POST YOUR REVIEW REVIEWS FOR: Intolerance
Baxter Martin
created on:
2007-02-27 17:45:17
Intolerance
Intolerance (1916, USA, DW Griffith)
“Intolerance” is worthy of watching for the sheer spectacle that it is. The sets used for Babylon are unrivalled in the history of cinema. Aside from what computers may be able to generate, the set for Babylon is the most lavishly ornate set you will ever see. The total cost of building the set was anywhere from a quarter to a third of the nearly $2 million total cost of the film. It is incredible!
D.W. Griffith’s film exhibits the grandeur that cinema has to offer even in today’s world. “Intolerance” makes use of some ‘newer’ film techniques. Camera movements in this time period were restricted, to say the least. Focus was limited to the subject of the frame and the action almost always would take place in front of a stationary camera. The use of close-up shots are rare as full and mid range shots comprise almost every shot of persons on screen. “Intolerance” uses crane shots to further illustrate the grandeur of Babylon and also used some layered shots in an ending montage sequence. Although these techniques are sparingly used, they aren’t overused and serve their purposes very well.
The film is divided into four stories from different times in history that are related through the theme of intolerance. Motivated by the negative press (although no press is bad press, especially if it means your film is ridiculously well received commercially) from “Birth of a Nation,” Griffith wanted to tell a story that would illustrate his claim to being an enemy of intolerance to all peoples. On the original print of the film, D.W. Griffith employed different colors for the four separate storylines. The film’s four story lines all revolve around heroines whose love for their men knows no racial/class/religious boundaries. The storylines are kind of cheesy and simple and it’s hard to have sympathy for any one person in the film (with the possible exception of ‘The Dear One’ who is in love with a reformed mob goon), as everyone seems to want to claw, backstab, and fight their own ways through life. “Intolerance” is a traditional Hollywood blockbuster that deserves to be seen once through for the truly awesome visual spectacle of a film that it is.
