In the wake of the public reaction, both FOR and AGAINST “Birth of a Nation” in 1915, Griffith was appalled, and determined that he absolutely MUST make a picture to respond. That picture, which he sunk every asset he had into, would become “Intolerance: A Sun-Play of  the Ages”. The Kino Video DVD includes a wonderful Video Intro by none other than Orson Welles himself, who says that every trick, every movement, every technique that exists in film is in this film. That may be true, or it may not be, it is no matter which a HUGE epic monster of a film. One sequence of Babylonian Orgy for example, cost as much as the whole budget for “Birth of a Nation”, previously the most expensive movie ever made!

Intolerance is four independent story lines that Griffith cuts back and forth between, and this IS innovation, because all 4 stories are set at different points in time. Story 1: Modern Times, with the Dear One played by Mae Marsh is trying to live a simple life as a worker at the Jenkins family factory mill, surrounded by intolerant women “reformers”. Story 2: Jerusalem just prior to the Passion of the Christ. Story 3: 1572 Paris, two young Hugenot lovers are trying to marry in the shadow of the intrigues of the court of Charles IX and Catherine Medici. Story 4: Babylon, just before the fall in 572BC where a woman, The Mountain Girl, is, after having been ruled incorrigible in the court of Hammurabi, is trying to make her way in the Marriage market. Several of the actors, including Mountain Girl (Constance Talmadge), appear in multiple roles. This is a simple and effective way of tying the story lines together, Mountain Girl is also the young Hugenot girl Marguerite de Valois in the French Story. Also, the whole movie is positively littered with luminaries both of the time and of the future. Douglas Fairbanks, Frank Borzage (Director), Erich Von Stroheim(Actor, Director), WS Van Dyke(Director), King Vidor(Director), Donald Crisp, Lillian Gish, Tod Browning(Director), John P. McCarthy(Director), Lloyd Ingraham(Actor, Director), Robert Harron, FA Turner, Sam De Grasse, Billy Quirk, and Wallace Reid(Actor, Director), are among the cast in various credited and uncredited roles. The Technical crew includes in 1^st and 2^nd Assistant Directors alone(!), are future Directors: Christy Cabanne (the 1^st Ben Hur, 166 Films), Tod Browning (Dracula, Freaks, 62 Films), Allen Dwan (Sands of Iwo Jima, 386 films), Victor Fleming (Gone with the Wind, Wizard of Oz, 49 Films), Sidney Franklin (The Good Earth, The Dark Angel, 67 Films), George W. Hill (The Big Parade, Min and Bill, 21 Films), Lloyd Ingraham (102 Films), and W.S. “One Take Woody” Van Dyke (The Thin Man series, original Love on the Run, 90 Films) and others! This film extends far far out into the world and history of film.

The recurring motif, a symbolic greek chorus if you will, is Lillian Gish, playing the mother of the world, rocking a cradle, in a lonely spot of light. This comes from a Walt Whitman poem. I do NOT like the fashion of “vignetting” or “iris-fades or iris rings” of shadows that is epidemic in Griffith, in both this and Birth of a Nation (WHICH SUCKS!). How much of this is Griffith and how much is his wunderkind Cameraman Billy Bitzer, I don’t know. Billy Bitzer is a whole other part of the Griffith story, and an important one, but I’m a Director more than a DP these days, so look up Bitzer on your own!

So from our Mother Time rocking the cradle, we arrive in modern America, at the headquarters of the local “activists” of their day, the “women’s movement”, in this case Suffragettes who want the vote for the sole purpose of instituting Prohibition of alcohol and “dancing in the taverns!”, but they need a rich backer, and in this town that means the Jenkins family matriarch. The Jenkins family are the local robber-baron mill owners. The rich woman is old and lonely and isolated, and the women’s movement go out of their way to be nice to her, as long as she continues to fund their crusade. “We must have laws to make people good!” “There is dancing in the taverns!”

Now we are off to Jerusalem. “Lord I thank thee that I am better than other men” sayeth the priest, I think one of the Pharisees.

Meanwhile in 1572 Paris, at the court of King Charles IX and Catherine Medici, “A hot bed of Intolerance” we meet Monsieur France, who is obviously gay, but that is not his crime, it is that he is frivolous! “pets and toys his past time”. It is this frivolousness that is encouraged by Medici, so that she can fill the vacuum of power. “Catherine Medici cloaks her intolerance of the Hugenots in the Great Catholic Church.”

We then meet Admiral Coligny, a big Hugenot but National Hero as well, and his less heroic Hugenot nobility backers. The Medici faction: “What a great Admiral, if only they thought as WE DO.” The Hugenot faction looking at King Charles: “What a great King, if only they thought as WE DO.” Well, the king’s sister is to be married to a Hugenot, to cement the unification of faiths in France, and unite the country. CUT TO an XCU of “Browneyes” a young beautiful (really) Hugenot girl in Paris.

The Cradle Rocks. And now we get intertitles with a Hebrew inscribed tablet for a background, instead of the plain black we have ALWAYS seen before, everywhere. Griffith is using the intertitle to further stitch the disparate times together with relatively timeless sentiments. This is very economical and efficient.

In the Modern day, a company dance for Jenkins employees “A time to dance” (this is a veiled reference to the Psalms). “Jenkins studies his employees habits” the local robber baron inspects the dance, noticing and picking up an errant dime, but hard as stone to the flirtations of some of the prettier factory girls. “10 O’Clock! They should be in bed so they can work tomorrow!”

Enter Babylon. Wow. Holy Crap this is some set building! Seriously, WOW. A real whole civilization. 125,000 people in this cast, and 7500 horses! The statuary is so damn big you can fit like 20 people on top of each one. The title design is great, a Babylonian motif now. Here also may be the first “American Cut”, which is an editing term for going from an extreme wide to an extreme closeup, preferably of someone already in action. In this case, we go to the face of “Mountain Girl”, who is being dragged into court by her brother for being “incorrigible”. “The First Known Court of Law, the Court of Hammurabi” we are told. The judge sentences her to be taken to the marriage market and married off. A good husband will surely tame this wild one.

In the present day, Mrs. Jenkins is now carrying so many “charities” that she has to complain to Baron Jenkins about not having enough money. He responds by slashing the entire workforce’s wages by 10%. This provokes a “Great Strike”. At the gates, a vast sea of starving men, “Hungry Ones wait to take their place.” At this point, things get ugly. The strikers are raging in the streets, so the US Army shows up to “break the strike”! They open fire on the crowd and kill the shit out of them. There is an amazing build up of tension in this sequence, cutting from the families, wives, mothers, children, waiting at their housegates up the hill from the mills, to the soldiers taking up formation in the street, to the angry rowdy (but non-destructive) strikers. Whammo! The soldiers start the bloodbath, and all the women come rushing down the hill as the strikers scatter and drop. Now the company goons block the gates and really start laying waste to some workers. The women are still rushing down, and it is just open war in the streets with only bad guys armed (thank you gun control!), er, rather, only with the proper authorities able to “enforce compliance” with deadly force.

The end result of this is that The Dear One (our heroine from this time) is out of work, and another character (in typical Silent Film convention known only as “the boy”) gets his Dad killed by the Army soldiers, and they both separately end up moving to the big city with others, including “the Friendless One”, another very pretty girl who will soon be taking up the world’s oldest profession OR just taxi-dancing, depending on how sinister you want to extrapolate the implications and sly hints that are all Griffith can pull off and still be legal in this day and age of 1916. Either way, she is a “cast down” one, so the character name “the friendless one” is actually probably the best  name she could have.

The sequence of this street warfare between US Military troops, Company Goons (er, I mean “Private Security Contractors” not “paid killers” or “Company Murderers”, absolutely Property over Life, this is America after all!) was supposedly based on real life Labor disputes, and was shot by Griffith as close to a recreation as he could get, with of course, dramatic editing. I have to say that this sequence struck a personal chord with me.         The Pennsylvania Railroad riots of 1877 lasted for 45 days and spread from Philadelphia and Baltimore all the way to Illinois. My Great Grand Uncle was directly in those, and it was the first time in history that the US Military was deployed against the civilian population in a “private” dispute. This was of course all done on the orders of the Barons of the railroad, in Pittsburgh, where the worst violence took place and where my Dad’s family was at the time, the name of this bastard was Thomas Alexander Scott, who said “let them eat a diet of rifles for a few days. See how they like that bread.”. Nice guy, hunh? A pillar of the respectable community who probably still has family roots in power to this day, I don’t know. Anyways, it was ugly, and lots of people were killed and wounded, the Pennsylvania militia bayoneted and shot 20 people in one incident, wounding another 29, before being driven into the railyards by the extremely enraged population. In Pittsburgh, where I lived for a spell, this is still remembered and talked about. Apparently, after the bayoneting, the local cops would not fire on the strikers, and the steel workers and miners from the surrounding boroughs came to town in support. They broke in and seized the state armory, got ARMED (Because Might DOES make Right, this IS America, remember, ask an Indian), and then attacked the Penn. National Guard (they were called militia then) and drove them into the railroad yards, which were burned to the ground around them. They either surrendered, or fought their way out of town a day later, depending on whose story you believe. The point is, the retribution of the people on these injustices was swift, immediate, and deadly. The kind of response that makes a government respect it’s armed populace. As Lee Ermey said, “your rifle is just a tool. It is a hard heart that kills.” Griffith, in this sequence, really got this across, and it is INTENSE to get in touch with these parts of US History, because I can not think of ANY other film that has ever dealt with or shown ANY of those events or that history. Hmmm, I wonder why?

But, Back to Babylon, where Mountain Girl is up on the block at the marriage market. She is a hellcat on the block, threatening to scratch the eyes out of anyone who comes near you. So nobody will bid on her. The agent flirts with her and she cusses him out. No one will bid on her. Now she actually has a problem with this rejection. After a while of being ignored, she gets really upset. Suddenly, a passing priest gets her off, and allows her, by decree, to live without being married. So now that she basically has religious protection, she starts hanging out in the temple with the virgins, and there is nudity all over the place here. Hot central, these pagans! I mean FULL frontal female Nudity. Back in the palace, the King promises to build his queen a city.

In the Modern Age, the Friendless One is now in her life of vice and degradation, and the new king of their worlds is known as the Musketeer of the Slums, a pimp, thug, extortionist. The Boy is now a thug working for the Musketeer. The Dear One in her new squalid single room, ties her knees together to try and walk like the fancy ladies in their dresses do. The Boy flirts, and comes on hard, the boy tells Dear One “Say you’re going to be my chicken.” Dear One’s father, however, saves her from his advances, ejects him, and beseechs her to pray with him. He then shortly after, now impotent in every way: no job, unable to protect his daughter from this ugly new world, and widowed with no way to make more children, or indeed have any sex at all, DIES. In the wake of this, the Boy increasingly creeps into her life. The acting of The Dear One, Mae Marsh, is stunning, she is REALLY communicating.

In Jerusalem, “In Cana there was a wedding.” Jesus shows up, and saves the honor of the household that has run out of wine for it’s guests by turning water to wine. Right at this point I said out loud “I feel like I’m watching a movie by a politician”. SO everyone at the wedding gets DRUNK. “In his small great way then as now.” Jesus stands, dissected by a cross of shadow across his front.

In France, “Brown eyes family, ignorant of the web of intolerance spinning around them.”

The Dear One is now dating the boy. After a date, “I always come inside.” “Help me be a strong jawed jane!”, she thinks. “No men allowed inside” she tells the boy. “I’ll never see you again!” He stomps out on her. Across town, Mary Jenkins big money has now made the “uplifters” the strongest and most powerful group in society. We see the giant growth in their offices, staff busy busy. They have an agenda to enforce, and they are efficiently putting it into action.

“Equally intolerant hypocrites of another age.” The mob is hating on a “winebibber” and are going to stone an adulterous woman in Jerusalem. Jesus appears and “he that is without sin among you let him cast the first stone.” The mob is halted in their tracks by the very IDEA, and of course a very dramatic Jesus. The stones drop from their hands. “Neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more.” So basically, “don’t be sorry, just don’t do it again”, perhaps is the lesson here?

“Now how do we find the Christians today?” Asks the intertitle. “The committee of 17 say they have cleaned up the city” Shots of closed bars, empty dancefloors surrounded by morose tables of young people. Signs – Bar closed, no dancing. “When women cease to attract men they often turn to reform as a second choice.” How about THAT for a hair curling intertitle!?! A vast montage of very ugly, or mannish (some of each), and two fey feminine men shoot, all gloating or happy, all glowing with victory over the “bad elements”. A toothless old man ends the montage, sad and questioning how and why this has happened. “Each one his own distiller” and here we get the HARDCORE montage of the birth of illegal liquor and the growth of organized crime. Ruthless ugliness here, people straining sterno through bread to get off type stuff, HARSH. The boy, in the midst of this expanding crime empire, led by the musketeer, now wants to go straight for the sake of the Dear One, their love having transformed his heart. The musketeer is obviously not going to allow this, so when the boy shows up, and says he’s retiring, they all jump him. He beats them, charged with righteouness and love, but the “The pimp arranges for the old familiar frameup.” (with help).

In Babylon, some priests are making trouble. It seems that there are two rival Gods/Temples. They discover a brick made 3200 years previous (3872 BC), and tell Cyrus, the King, that the Persian army is close up on the city. The Persians are supposedly in league with the Bel priests, who hate Ishtar. The Persians are then shown as “The Modest Persians”, who demand only that “each man perspire every day” and they have a diverse civilization as well, made up of “Ethiopians”(played by REAL black people) “Barkrians”(white people) and “Asians” (played by REAL Asians). It should be said that at this point in time, that it was quite normal to NEVER hire any non-whites for non-white roles. Minstrel shows were only a few years out of vogue, and their influence would echo on for some time to come. Even Griffith had whites play blacks in Birth of a Nation, so it is actually quite something, this casting.

The Dear One is sad, the Boy and her now have a baby together but the Boy is doing time in prison for a crime he did not commit. The Uplifters are on the warpath now against “negligent mothers”. The Dear One, who can’t pay the heating bill, has caught a cold. “A cold sends our little mother to an old fashioned remedy condemned publicly, yet used privately by many physicians and Hospitals.” At this time, and to this day, cold remedies have had a high percentage of alcohol. The Uplifters barge into her apartment and find her baby alone in it’s pathetic crib. They wait for her return. She comes in with the “remedy”, and of course, “WHISKEY!” they snatch the baby out of the cradle. “You’re no fit mother” but the Dear One fights the crones off, and they leave, hurrying to report Dear One to the Uplifters Headquarters. “Reporting the Case”. These hags decide to take the baby away, and go to court with their well paid lawyers and a judge gives them a paper. This sequence is particularly ugly.

“Suffer The Children” says Jesus, who fades in, and then slowly fades away in an iris close down.

The Jenkins Foundation is the edifice that actually takes the baby away from Dear One, in a terribly moving and tragic scene, makes one think of Elian Gonzalez. So Dear One, for whatever reason (poverty, naivete, stupidity, trustingness?) decides to give the Jenkins Foundation the benefit of the doubt, “Maybe they’re right”. No. Nurses in wards. “Of course hired mothers are never negligent”. As the babies, all isolated in their individual cage/cribs, cry, the nurses dance together! Dear One, who has been peeping on all of this, goes crazy.

In France, meanwhile, an incident is manufactured by Medici at the gate between the Hugenots and the Catholics. A Massacre ensues. Lances in the gut. Trussed up guys tossed off city walls to their deaths. Statues smashed. “Eye for Eye” – Christian duality right there in the titles! Well Done Larry!

Cyrus moves on Babylon, and Mountain Girl is an archer fighting for Belshazzar (the king)! The Siege of Babylon is a visual stunner! I mean, like, Lord of the Rings Stunner, only everything is REAL! Real siege towers, real tens of thousands of soldiers. Over the course of filming all the combats that take place in the Babylon story, sometimes there would be as many as 69 casualties taken to the field hospitals set up around the location, since the extras would get very carried away, and most combat in silents is, at best, theatrical, but more often than not, just REAL. John Ford used to offer $10 to the first stuntman who got a bloody nose when shooting in these days. The walls of this city have GOT to be at least 100ft tall. Cyrus issues a prayer – “Kill Kill Kill and the glory be to God!” amazing stunts ensue. Seriously wow time. Thinking the city lost, many of the temple women commit suicide. Gore! Neck Biting! BEHEADING! The 2 sword man kicks ass! A Flame thrower is used!! (The Germans had JUST invented the modern version of this and put it into use in World War I in the trenches) The flame thrower is mounted on a Babylonian tank that makes a breakout from the city, and lays waste to the Persians. Seige tower MADNESS! Mountain Girl is stoked, Babylon wins!

ACT TWO.

The Dear One falls into the Musketeers clutches with the promise of getting the boy out of jail. And the boy does get out of jail. Meanwhile the baby is very sad in the Jenkins Foundation’s “care facility”.

A primitive but nonetheless impressive dolly/CRANE shot takes us back down into Babylon. The 2 sword guy is petting a dove of peace happily. The Babylonian victory celebration is…incredible. Complete ORGIES, nudity, this was a PARTY for a victory. “To Thee oh Ishtar! All praise for the victory!”. Elephants, HUGE statues with balconies, pillars with balconies, stunning. I have to say that throughout the Babylonian story the distinction between the Bel and Ishtar factions are never really clear. Whether this is bad story clarity or if it is an ambivalence (a common trait of literature and art in the post-industrial-revolution world of the early 20^th century). Another point of confusion is that the king of Babylon is Belshazzar, who Mountain Girl is loyal to.The fade ins are way overused as well. “The high priest looks down upon the city he seeks to betray to Cyrus.” Here is a really interesting shot, a “process shot” I think, making it one of the earliest, in fact the first process shot I have seen so far. BUT it could be a matte painting composite shot. However the Priest is looking at the “city”, it is an impressive shot. “oh they thank Ishtar today, but tomorrow Bel – Cyrus will avenge thee!”. The Priest stations his chariots at the gate of the city. “In Babylon’s tenements – a simple repaste”. Mountain Girl, in her celebrations, starts flirting with one of the charioteers. He is pulled aside and conspired with by the Bel Priest faction people, and Mountain Girl twigs to it. She will now play along with this dude to try and find out what they are up to.

In France, Catherine Medici wants all the Hugenots killed. The King freaks, he does not want to order a religious genocide. Finally, cornered by Medici, “FINE, if God wills it, Kill them all!” and Charles freaks out. “We must destroy or be destroyed!” Medici tells her coplotters, the classic justification for all the evil of the ages, “self-defense”, er, wait, I mean to say that Medici merely wants a pre-emptive strike to defend her Catholic Aristocratic way of life, and we surely would all go along with that to this day, wouldn’t we? WELL WE DID ACCEPT THAT IDEA- SELF-DEFENSE IN ADVANCE!!! Prosper(the better half of Brown Eyes – the better half of Prosper) and Brown Eyes are getting married. On St. Bartholomew’s day, Catholic agents spread through Paris, marking all the Hugenot houses with an X. Prosper now grows suspicious of all the signs and preparations.

Now there is a huge sequence of worship to the Fertility Temple in Babylon. The setup of the city by the traitors begins.

In the ghetto, the Musketeer visits the Dear One, intent on turning her into a whore with promises of her babies freedom and return to her. He locks the door and advances on her. The Friendless One though, has followed the Musketeer, and waits outside the side door. The Boy on his way home from prison, is stopped by a henchman, who tells him “Just saw the boss go up to see your wife”. Fearing the worst, the Boy rushes home. Hearing the boy coming, the Friendless One has to crawl out onto the ledge overlooking a courtyard, where she watches the scene in the room through the open window. The Boy rushes in and there is an immediate battle between the Musketeer and him. The Musketeer gets the upper hand and knocks everyone out. As he goes to escape, the Freindless One shoots him twice in the back through the window from the ledge. She drops the gun inside the room and jumps to the ground 1 story below. The Boy gets up, discovers the murder, and the gun. The Cops burst in and take him away for the murder of the Musketeer. The Boy goes on trial for murder, and the Friendless One is mortified! We get an XCU on her worrying face. “Injustice and Intolerance in the Courts!” The Dear One worries. Guilty. “Eye for an Eye”.

In Jerusalem, “Let him be crucified”.

The Boy’s sentence: Death by hanging. “The Kindly Heart” a cop. XXCU on The Friendless One’s face. She returns to the scene of the crime. Kindly Heart is there investigating. He believes that the boy has been wrongfully convicted. “He sees ray of hope in Governor’s visit.” And now we are treated to a “Death Poem”, which is quite good and moving.

Mountain Girl is watching the Priests from a distance as they plot with Cyrus. “The Great Conspiracy”.

“The Boy’s Last Day – Hangman’s test”. Dear One tries to go to the Governor herself, but is intercepted by Kindly Heart. “Oh God, Don’t let them do it!” The Friendless One continues agonizing, watching the Dear One and Kindly Heart take off in a car. “Follow that cab!” (no doubt the first ever utterance of this cliché phrase in movies!), the Friendless One follows.

The Massacre of St. Bartholomew goes into action in Paris. “For Brown Eyes, a terrible awakening.” This shit just gets crazy here. You should just watch this yourself.

Dear One’s appeal fails with the Governor. Kindly Heart however, has detected the Friendless One following them, as he goes to investigate her, she flees and he gives chase. The Governor leaves on the train.

Mountain Girl is racing back to Babylon in a chariot to try and warn the slumbering partied out city that they are to be betrayed by the priests to the Persians. GREAT “Racing/Chasing” sequence ensues.

Kindly Heart catches the Friendless One who confesses. Now he must get her to the Governor! Freindless One, Dear One, and Kindly Heart take off after the train in a race car they commandeer.

“Doomed City: Wedding Tommorow” in Babylon the party continues.

In the blood soaked streets of Paris, Hugenots are being killed everywhere. A family is chased past a church, and a child falls behind. Quickly, the Catholic priest sweeps the Hugenot child literally under his robes. The pursuing soldiers are then sent in the wrong direction by him, so even here, Griffith goes out of his way to show that there are still Catholic clergy who practice compassion, mercy, and sanctuary, the best of the virtues espoused by Christianity (if you want to see them that way – the Christians OR the virtues). “Medici is scratching out the lives of your people” an adviser tells Prosper, who because of his social rank, has badges of safety, one for him, one for Brown Eyes, if he can just get to her. Still he runs into trouble with soldiers who want to detain him. At Brown Eye’s house the slaughter begins. Mercenaries kill the families on her block, a baby is tossed out a window into the street two stories below, and then kicked into the air by a soldier.

Jesus is led to the cross.

Babylon parties on.

The Last rites are delivered to the Boy in prison by the prison priest.

The Cradle Rocks.

In Paris, Rape.

The train with the governor hurtles down the tracks.

The race car chases the train, and we get an XCU of Kindly’s foot stomping on the accelerator.

The boy begins his last walk to the gallows.

Brown Eyes is raped and run through. As she walks through the deadly streets, Catherine Medici gloats over the bodies of the Hugenots. Prosper finally gets to the house and finds the dead Brown Eyes, in a rage he attacks the Catholic soldiers and is quickly killed.

Mountain Girl reaches the City ahead of the Persians, but her warnings are delayed, first by the gate, then by disbelief and “chain of command”.

CU of Boy facing his execution.

Cyrus enters the city of Babylon through the gate held by the Priest’s charioteers. The Fight is ON, but is already decided by this betrayal and breach. Mountain Girl goes down fighting to the last, her body riddled with arrows, she falls like a warrior. All the palace concubines are obliged to die for their king, so their suicides begin. The 2 sword guy, realizing it is all over, commits suicide with his girl. “To God the glory! Long live Cyrus!”. A long montage of the dead, eyes open, questioning – how? Why?

In prison, the chaplain is suddenly overcome by sickness, delaying the walk for a moment.

Jesus is crucified on the mountain top.

In the execution chamber, a phone call! The process slows, but the boy is tied up, fitted with a hood, and the noose is placed around his neck. HIGH TENSION. The Boy is saved! “When cannon and prison bars wrought in the fires of intolerance. And perfect love shall bring peace forevermore, instead of prison walls bloom flowery fields.” And we end with the original definitive “God shining light through the clouds” shot! END!

WOW what a picture!

At first my gut was like, “holy crap, he’s blaming it all on women!” but on closer examination, while he has a hell of a lot of beef with the tee-totaller modern reform women, it is certainly NOT black/white on this issue. Brown Eyes and Dear One are both classic threatened but totally virtuous and innocent women. Mountain Girl is the definition of the empowered, self-determined and HEROIC woman of today. Catherine Medici is the most cruel and genocidally manipulative villain. The Uplifters are haters of fun and frolic, and are systemic, “non-personal” villains. Then there is the Friendless One, a woman of ill repute, and a murderess, who is redeemed through confession, which is both ennobling AND a Catholic ideal. The Catholics are both genocidal as a group, but merciful and protective as individuals – the priest who hides the Hugenot child, and the adviser who warns Prosper about Medici. There are assorted whores, concubines, church ladies, and incidental non-offensively portrayed women scattered throughout.

Also, while the Bible could certainly be used to slam women hard, it is not used that way, the tale of Christ is inserted very strategically, and it focuses almost exclusively on Jesus’ attitudes about Intolerance. Beyond that, the story of the Christ is used in a “great simple way” as juxtaposition, to lend moral weight OR criticism to that which is on either side of it, an obviously great leap in the understanding of editing.

The editing in this is legitimately, nothing short of a revolution. This really REALLY makes “Birth of a Nation” look like SHIT. Other than the excessive fade in’s, and the vignetting (which may all be Bitzer’s fault), which must be seen as just the fashion of the time, this is a real departure in technique. Crane shots! Dolly shots! Mobile crazy racing chariot/train/car shots that would do the Keystone Cops proud! Welles was right, just about every shot you can make in the basic grammar of the most simple cinema style is in here.

The production itself is as epic as the picture, which makes sense since in those days you pretty much HAD to “put it all on the screen” because there was no where else to spend the money! No special FX – save the first process shot I have ever seen, no sound, no expensive titling or jazzy credit sequences – although the intertitle design was a real upgrade of decorative use, the tablet backgrounds for example.

All in all, this may be the biggest, most expensive, and over the top production of an Art movie in history. It is long as HELL, but honestly, it is worth the watching, screw that “Birth of a Nation” racist swill, oh wait… Am I being Intolerant?? Lots of the GOOD tough questions to ask yourself after this picture, and he certainly is convicted in his views. It is amazing to me that Griffith could even MAKE a picture as well balanced ideologically and representational as this. Yes, it has many of the bigotries that were in fashion at the time, as we will see the movies of today do as well. The Persians are in league with the Africans and Asians in toppling the peaceful but decadent Babylonians, but looked at through the lense of those bigotries, it would be hard to say WHO was being vilified, the Non-Christian pagans, or the multi-ethnic Persian conquerors! Ishtar and Bel? Neither are Christian, yet Christ is used to add moral weight to their dilemma the same as the other stories! You could spend a LOT of time trying to “read this text” or decipher all the different angles being presented and/or tweaked by Griffith.

This is really worth watching, as a filmmaker it is important, but as the general public goes, if you can get past black/white (with tinting) and intertitles, it is quite a hell of a set of images, with a really effective payoff. A very emotional, good picture.