Saturday Night Cinema: D.W. Griffith’s “Intolerance”

Tonight's epic presentation is D.W. Griffith's Spectacular, "Intolerance." Vincent Canby said of it in 1971:

D. W. Griffith's "Intolerance" had its world premiere at the Liberty Theater on the evening of Sept. 5, 1916. It had cost a mind-bending $2-million to produce, starred just about everyone who was ever connected with Griffith, featured dozens

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The public, which has never liked to have its mind bent, was apparently confused. The film was a financial failure. The critics, who were in awe of Griffith, were respectful of the film, but bored by everything except its spectacle.

It is not difficult to find flaws in such a giant work, but they are small flaws, and it is an idiot's pleasure to dwell upon them, as John Howard Lawson once did when he complained that nothing happened to the woman rocking the cradle. Knowing Lawson's ideas, I suppose he would have liked the woman, towards the end of the film, to abandon the cradle to take up arms at the barricades of Babylon, to kneel at the foot of the cross in Jesus's Judea, to throw a cobblestone at Catherine de Medici after the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, and to be on hand, in the modern sequence, when The Dear One saves The Boy from the gallows.

[..]

It is not difficult to marvel at the physical spectacle of "Intolerance" — the Babylonian sequence and Griffith's extraordinary crane shots have never been equalled; nor does it take a film buff to appreciate what has been called (maybe twice too often) the fugue-like structure of the film, the careful tempo of the cross-cutting that finally culminates in a positive orgy of interrelated, simultaneous climaxes, in Judea, Babylon, Paris and "a western American city" in 1916.

"Intolerance," however, has a lot more than this. It has, among other things, some beautiful performances, particularly by Mae Marsh as The Dear One, a modern strike sequence that is as stark and straight as a Dreiser exposition, and, over all, the sensibility of a romantic, extremely complicated man who, after the racial madnesses of "The Birth of a Nation," came forth with an essay on intolerance, which so often gets away from its subject that, if the title cards were removed, you might forget about intolerance completely.

Don't be bothered by those title cards ("The loom of fate weaves death for The Boy's father"). They are part of the literature of an era, and if you find them camp, the fault is not in the film.

Right news article: The New York Times 1916 movie review:

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Dinah Kanser

13 years ago

Thank You Ms Geller for hosting these Saturday night movies.
More and more I find myself coming here every Saturday night in anticipation of just what gem you will present for our enjoyment.
In this world (especially nowadays) we all need a break.
Thanks again.

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Livingengine

13 years ago

Pamela Geller in Tennessee
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVJo9i4HtiE&feature=player_embedded

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Tom TB

13 years ago

Thanks Pamela! My nomination for best supporting actress…Constance Talmadge as “The Mountain Girl”!

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Yamsi

13 years ago

Thank you!
Constance Talmadge played two parts – what a gal!
I have often heard of this movie, but never had the opportunity before to actually see it.
Thanks!!!

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