comments and explication

If you want to see a movie with great ambition that overreached itself in that regard but has since gained in stature as a classic then i recommend "Intolerance". It is certainly one of the most mind boggling spectacles ever made, an enormous production that rivals even the most spectacular movies of today. D.W Griffith, the film's director, made "Intolerance" immediately after completing "The Birth of a Nation" (1915) , his classic but incendiary Civil War epic that outraged many moviegoers with its stereotypical, brutally racist depiction of Blacks. Griffith, himself a Southerner and hardly an expert on American History told the story of The war Between the States from his own particular, biased point of view, much of it based on stories told to him by his grandfather, a veteran of the war. Griffith was stunned by much of the negative reaction to his movie, a movie that plays incredibly loose with the facts but is a landmark in film technique, a 3 hour fictional account of the american Civil war as seen through the eyes of two families , one from the North, the other from the South. Despite gross innacuracies in its depiction of blacks and the founding of the Klu Klux Clan (made out to be heroes in the film) the movie is a technical marvel (photography, editing and striking battle sequences) and was considered the "Gone with the Wind" of its day. and despite what appears to be crude, melodramatic acting, the movie still manages to be a powerful viewing experience.

The same thing can be said of "Intolerance" (1916), an even more ambitious film extravaganza that Griffith made as a "response" to the detractors of his previous film. In weaving together four seperate stories (The Fall of Babylon, The Passion of Christ, The St. Batholemew's Massacre and a "modern" story, The Mother and the Law) it was Griffith's intent to show intolerance through the ages in a dramatic context. By showing Man's inhumanity Toward Man in such spectacular fashion Griffith hoped to quell some of the harsh criticism aimed at him for creating his own biased version of The Civil War.

"Intolerance" is a complex, very long film that is fragmented by telling four individual stories. By far the most visually striking and spectacular sequence is The Fall of Babylon, which out DeMille's anything Cecil B. DeMille ("The Ten Commandments', "Samson and Delilah" and "the King of Kings") ever did. All 4 stories are strung together in such a way that at some point each one interrupts the other, then is returned to, only to be interrupted again with the continuation of each said story. It makes for a challenging viwing experience and a serious test of endurance. Silent film audiences were not used to such complex narratives where there was so much cross cutting involved between stories. The movie was way ahead of its time. Not surprisingly, "Intolerance" was a box office failure and contemporary critics (save for a few) thought it a critical one as well. Since then the tables have turned and the movie is considered by many film historians and serious film critics as one of the greatest motion pictures ever made. i think most modern moviegoers would have difficulty sitting through "Intolerance" ; it is extremely long, fragmented, crudely acted in the style of the day. It is also incredibly impressive visually and becomes more involving as the story evolves, becoming almost unbearably suspenseful toward the end.

I hope this comment was informative. I think "Intolerance' is well worth seeing. It's a long movie (approximately 3 hours in most current versions.)

Mike O'Farrell