Intolerance

Composite Score: 85.97

Starring: Lillian Gish, Robert Harron, Mae Marsh, F.A. Turner, Vera Lewis, Miriam Cooper, Walter Long, Howard Gaye, Margery Wilson, Eugene Pallette, Josephine Crowell, Constance Talmadge, Elmer Clifton, Alfred Paget, and Tully Marshall

Director: D.W. Griffith

Writer: D.W. Griffith and Anita Loos

Genres: Drama, History, Epic, Romance

MPAA Rating: Passed

Box Office: $1.75 million worldwide

Why should you Watch This Film?

                Intolerance is D.W. Griffith’s silent epic about four stories, centuries apart, that depict the negative impact of prejudice, intolerance, and violence on human society. The film follows the stories of “The Dear One” (Mae Marsh) in the modern day (1910s) as she works to live a virtuous life, protect her husband, and stay strong in the face of hypocritical piety, “Brown Eyes” (Margery Wilson) as she lives through the French persecution of the Protestant Huguenots, Jesus Christ (Howard Gaye) and his life story, and “The Mountain Girl” (Constance Talmadge) as she fights for her own independence and to protect her kingdom from betrayers and outsiders in ancient Babylon. The film is considered one of the most influential films of all time, with its production design, particularly editing style, carrying over into many future films. It has also been praised for its celebration of the power of love and the magnificent scale of its historical sequences.

Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?

                For those of you who don’t know or have chosen to ignore it, D.W. Griffith is a problematic filmmaker, simply for the existence of his first film, The Birth of a Nation, which proliferated negative stereotypes about black Americans and portrayed the KKK as a heroic group that exists to protect American values and traditions, among other issues. Sometimes such films in a filmmaker’s past could be forgiven or overlooked, but in Griffith’s case, it seems fairly clear, historically speaking, that Intolerance was made in direct response to Birth’s detractors, portraying them as hypocritical and legalistic, while still sneaking in bits of Klan-coded dog-whistling – portraying Babylon as this glorious homogenous haven standing against the barbaric hordes of Cyrus the Great (who was considered one of the best foreign emperors by ancient Jews), white Jesus, setting up an inalienable distinction between Catholics and Protestants with Catholics as the greedy, feminine, villains, and highlighting the victimhood of this implicit “silent majority” who always suffer when the wealthy and the working class clash. Look, I think this film is a technical marvel and incorporates some incredibly creative filmmaking techniques that I don’t even know if we could come close to recreating today, but I also think it’s important to approach its story with a critical eye, given Griffith’s track record, and in that regard, it fails to pass inspection.

So wait, why should you Watch This Film?

                The reason that we’re here talking about Intolerance, though (at least to me), is its technical prowess and cinematic achievement. Like I said before, it’s a film that made the most of a period when filmmaking didn’t have a whole lot going for it in the technical department. The sets capture the scale of each of its stories so perfectly – the “modern” sets feel like the dingy trappings of a working-class apartment in the 1910s, those in France capture both the claustrophobia of the streets of Paris and the grandiosity of French royalty, Jerusalem/the Holy land feels fairly archetypal but gets its point across, and the scale of Babylon is unmatched in its era and something often only accomplished with computers in the modern day. Combine that with an unflinching commitment to jumping between stories at the precise moments that the stories coincide, marked by the ubiquitous woman rocking the cradle (Lilian Gish), and you get this wild technical masterpiece that really does feel like the original “art film” while also being like no other film that’s ever been made.

                Credit is owed where it’s due, and for D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance, credit is owed greatly to its filmmaking techniques that gave audiences a historical epic interwoven with a tale of the Christ, a French historic melodrama, and a modern parable of legalism and capitalism, earning it a place among the greats. Griffith’s stances and their impact on the story of the film and its overall messaging cannot be ignored, however, and it’s important to watch the film with as critical an eye as possible and not ignore the dog whistles that feature in its presentation. Currently, this film is available to stream in one of its surviving versions on Amazon Prime Video if you’d like to check it out.