Spring 2015 #13: Intolerance (1916) - D.W. Griffith

Do not attempt this movie without proper mental preparation!

Just so you know ahead of time, this shot exists in the film.

Okay. Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages is a silent film epic by famous motion picture director D.W. Griffith. The film comes just one year after his divisive Birth of a Nation, which grossed $48 million, or $678 million in 2015. That film, which revolutionized motion picture storytelling as a true art form, turns 100 this year.

This is his flop of a follow-up. The film cost $2.5 million ($47 million today), used 3,000 extras, and bankrupted the studio, Triangle Film Corporation.

Intolerance seams together four epic stories of… intolerance. There’s a modern (1916) story of a mill workers’ strike, the French story of the events that led up to the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572, the Biblical story of the events leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and the Babylonian story of the war between Prince Belshazzar of Babylon and Cyrus the Great of Persia in 539 BC.

Did I mention the movie is 3 hours and 17 minutes? That’s actually tied with Schindler’s List for the fourth longest film I’ve reviewed so far, after Gone with the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, and The Godfather Part 2. 

Oh right. So the production value of this is literally unbelievable for its time period. The Babylon scenes are massive in scale, as well as the final massacre scene in the French story.

And while the film is boring as hell for a majority of the time, it did manage to have four separate storylines with simultaneous climaxes for the last thirty minutes or so, which is fun. Between an ancient war, a crucifixion, a massacre of French Protestants, and a high speed train chase, you really can’t be all that disappointed for sitting through the film that’s three minutes longer than Titanic but without a single line of dialogue.

The film transitions between its stories with this shot of “The Eternal Mother” rocking a cradle. It supposedly symbolizes the timelessness of human nature, mothers raising babies.

But the intolerance theme feels forced sometimes. I didn’t know what was intolerant about the Babylonian plotline. In fact, it seemed like Griffith was more making this film as a response to the backlash he received for Birth of a Nation, which was criticized for glorifying the Ku Klux Klan. This is like a “Hey, being hateful is bad, look at what it’s done over the past 2,500 years.” And although I haven’t seen Birth of a Nation, I have a feeling this one is much less problematic.

But Intolerance, despite being a flop financially, has powerful and bizarre cultural influence. For starters, the giant elephant statues at the Hollywood and Highland shopping center in Los Angeles are models of the ones used in the Babylon scenes.

EVEN BETTER, the film INVENTED eyelash extensions. That’s right. D.W. Griffith wanted Seena Owen, who played the Princess of Babylon, to have eyelashes “that brushed her cheeks, to make her eyes shine larger than life.” They wove human hair into gauze and attached it to her eyelids. Crazy right?

Anyway the film is #49 on the AFI 100 Films list, and is impressive despite being released 99 years ago.