Keeping in mind the Mark Twain quote on how a classic is something that "everyone wants to have read but nobody wants to read," I've lately made it a goal to actually go back and watch all the old canonical classic films. It's all the satisfaction of a job with none of the pay, and this blog may be dipping in and out of the quest from time to time--provided the commentary isn't too redundant (Citizen Kane is good, etc.). First was a matter of choosing a canon, which is a post for another time). But D.W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916) is one that appears in seemingly all of them.
Intolerance was Griffith's follow-up to his hated/admired film The Birth of a Nation (1915), which will now and forever be one of film history's most problematic milestones. For those who aren't familiar with the film, or for whom it only rings a faint bell, The Birth of a Nation is famous primarily for two reasons.
First, it's a bona fide cinematic landmark. At a time when movies were seen as more of a novelty than an artistic medium, Griffith together techniques we take for granted (cross-cutting, close-ups) into a multi-threaded epic that demonstrated the possibilities of cinema on a grand scale.
Second, the film is blatantly, virulently, and unforgivably racist. Not even as a subtext--more like a flare shot up into the sky. The movie's historical perspective is essentially that the South goes to hell after the slaves are freed, and all seems lost until the KKK ride in to save the day. Even in its time--over a half century before the term "politically correct" became popularized--the film was met with protests. Today, it seems almost too grotesque to believe that anyone ever took it seriously. The most mind-blowing part is that Griffith was reportedly taken aback by charges of racism, which can still make your head spin, considering the ostensibly-happy ending of the film is that the KKK keep black people from voting. But he was so put off by accusations of intolerance that he decided to make his next movie an epic morality tale about the evils of intolerance, titled in its full form: Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (a 3+ hour movie with an apparently all-white cast, where black people make a split-second cameo as train porters...don't blink).
And "throughout the ages" is the emphasis. Intolerance is, in fact, four different stories about the price of intolerance, each set in a different time period: the Fall of Babylon, the Death of Christ, the Massacre of the Hugeunots, and a modern tale, concerning labor strikes, city crime, and social crusaders. The film hops back and forth between the stories, as each arcs and climaxes at the same time. It's a technical achievement, the biggest film of its day, and a step forward in narrative complexity. Audiences at the time were baffled, but its stature has become legendary in its own way. And since its ideological content is far less troubling, Intolerance--which diplomatically replaced Birth on the American Film Institute's most recent Top 100 list--is the canonical way to give Griffith his due as a filmmaker without praising a film that essentially functions as KKK propaganda. Much ink on this has already been spilled, and for anyone who wishes to know more about Birth of a Nation and its problematic place in film history, I would actually recommend this essay from Ebert.
Intolerance remains equally praised in the world of film, but less prominent in American history. So with a mixture of curiosity and tentative cynicism, I sat down and watched all 197 minutes of Birth of a Nation's lesser known and relatively inoffensive younger sibling.
And I have to say, almost a hundred years later, the sheer scope of it remains staggering. The amount of sets, costumes, and extras--in the earliest age of film technology--is jaw-dropping. As an example, here's a shot of Babylon:
And that's just for one fraction of the movie.
There's also the court of the French royal family, a car vs. train race, a menagerie of animals, a monumental siege, and what appears to be an Bronze Age flame-tank. In short, the embodiment of old Hollywood spectacle to the nth degree.
As for its ideological content, Intolerance is fairly but not entirely unproblematic . Most of the movie is devoted to preaching basic messages about how Intolerance with a capital "I" is wrong. Different sides barrel towards war based on sanctimony, greed, or misunderstanding, and good people are caught in the middle. Often, the lesson is delivered bluntly with a title card (NOTE: The title cards often have a NOTE at the bottom, much like this one, to offer surface-level or oversimplified historical tidbits). "Simple," in fact, is a good way to sum up the film's worldview.
The more objectionable parts come in the 20th century story, where one of the many villains Griffith sees descending in the modern world is a group of frumpy suffragettes hell-bent on "reform." To be fair, the villainous reform they have in mind is not women's rights, but a crusade against social behavior they deem immoral, such as dancing (think of it as a Wilson era Footloose). So that, per se, is not too problematic. But then you have this title card, in which, with customary subtlety, the narrator informs us: "When women cease to attract men, they often turn to reform as a second option."
The idea that such a sentiment--not to mention the film's rather traditional, homogeneous view of paradise--might foster the very intolerance Griffith wishes to denounce is an irony that sails cheerfully over the film's head. If nothing else, Griffith's body of work makes for a handy artifact on how we all share the same basic abstract values of love and fairness, but can be totally blind to the ways we break them.
But moments like that are relatively small, at least by the standards of retrospective politics. The bulk of Intolerance is more like a big-budgeted after school special, and the explicit messages are, for the most part, simply those kind of basic abstract ethics that I'm sure more or less everyone can get behind. Some of it actually hits a moral potency--peace, love, understanding, and even a kind of religious pluralism. Admittedly, its pluralism is limited to sects of Christianity and ancient Babylonian religions that have long since ceased to be politicized. But hey, baby steps.
So how does Intolerance hold up as a movie/film/not a historical artifact? I have to say, it weaves its narratives together admirably, but as a story it's not terribly exciting, which is a consequence when surprise takes a backseat to theme. Most of it is spent preaching a very direct point about societal ills. It's not that its targets--hypocrites, warmongers, self-righteous moralizers--are particularly objectionable, just that sermons aren't as interesting as drama, at least not over 197 minutes. During the running time, there are a lot of moments, both big and small, that hold up very well. But largely, with few compelling or surprising plot turns, it basically boils down to a message and a spectacle.
But then, as it gets to the end: the cross-cutting! Oh, the cross-cutting! Rolling on and on for what must be the last 30 minutes, building tension into a cascade of climaxes, tragedies, and ultimately triumph. Still works.
In fact, watching Intolerance, I found it very interesting how much from the silent era has been passed down to current film and American popular culture. Examples:
--The tone of the battle scenes. I'm not quite sure how to put it. Their sense of excitement is not too far removed from Spielberg. The way the tomboyish Mountain Girl dances comically in triumph during a non-climactic battle reminds me of pretty much every comic sidekick in a Hollywood action epic. In one scene, amidst battle and chaos, a normally helpless damsel in distress knocks out a bad guy from behind with a pot--and it occurred to me that that basic action trope has been circulating in the movie industry for a century.
--The yearning for a pre-modern rural America as a kind of paradise, to be defended and restored.
--The split view of sex. Victorian purity is held up throughout as the ideal for women. And then the camera lingers with fascination on an exotic Babylonian harem, as scantily clad women recline luxuriantly for long takes. This may have less to do with Griffith than the nature of the movie industry; the scenes were reportedly added after the powers-that-be requested that the film have more sex. Still, moral values sit side by side with the principle of "sex sells," which is a longstanding cultural trend if there ever was one.
Hell, even its size seems like a distinctly American heritage. If there's one thing about world cinema history that seems inarguable, it's that America makes the biggest movies. See James Cameron, who once proclaimed that "size does matter," and who's set out to make the biggest film of the time, for several times in a row. And giant, pet-projects epics expressing a personal populist sentiment have popped up in the new millenium as well. Just see Mel Gibson.
Ultimately, if this boils down to a review, I can't really recommend seeing Intolerance for most people (and I know you were planning to). Film history completists with a free afternoon can go wild, but it's largely a question of "having had" seen it, rather than seeing it.
But I should also say that none of my hesitancy has to do with it being a silent film, a medium that holds up incredibly well in an age when everyone is piling on stimuli. The avant-garde ones still have an edge, yes, but what first surprised me was how many are still gripping--easy to follow, smoothly paced--after almost 100 years. For anyone who's never seen a silent film and is curious about how it can be as good as anything with sound, I'd recommend starting with this one.
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