Intolerance

D.W. Griffith, the silent film maker, is most known for "Birth of a Nation" (1915), a Civil War epic which portrayed the Ku Klux Klan as valiant knights defending the dignity of white women from the ravages of wild, savage blacks – so much so that it single-handedly spawned the rebirth of the Klan in the United States, which at that time had been dormant. A year later, he brought a completely different epic, "Intolerance."

 After years of searching for this, I finally managed to find it from Netflix. It has 4 separate story lines, of which only one is original: (1) Ancient Babylon, (2) Jesus’ crucifixion; (3) the Huguenot massacre in France in 1572; and (4) a contemporary story.

 In each story the theme is intolerance. In ancient Babylon, Babylon falls because the High Priest of Marduk is jealous of the worship of Ishtar and betrays the city to the Persians, led by Cyrus. In Jesus’ case, it’s the high priests of the Jewish faith who arrange to have Jesus crucified, intolerant of his radical views. The French example is obvious: intolerance of the Protestants by the Catholics. And in the modern (1916) story, the intolerance is somewhat attenuated: the hero of the story is unfairly convicted of a murder, but the main "intolerance" is of the temperance movement which institutes prohibition and confiscates a woman’s baby – Child Protective Services circa 1916. Griffith cynically points out that the women behind the reform movement are ugly old ladies who can no longer attract men, so their goal is to prevent any of the younger people from having any fun; no booze, no dancing, no brothels.

 The film bounces around from the 4 stories, and does not equally focus on each one. It’s 50% Babylon, 30% modern, then 15% French and 5% Jesus. The Babylonian scenes are by far the most impressive, including the massive siege of Babylon by the Persians: huge assault towers, ladders, battering rams, catapults, immense walls, even a primitive fire-breathing "tank", and literally an army of extras (over 16,000). The special effects are bizarre: you’ll see a warrior’s head literally explode (clearly camera stopped and live actor switched out for a dummy with a paper mache head).

 Interestingly, the Babylonian segment has a modern parallel. We have "intolerance" of the Sunnis and Shi’ites: (analogous to Marduk vs. Ishtar) and Iran (Persians) have some role in screwing things up in Iraq (Babylon).

 It’s also somewhat bizarre that the same man who brought us "history written in lightning" (as Woodrow Wilson famously described ‘Birth of a Nation") – probably the best case of intolerance you could possibly imagine – also brought us this surprisingly liberal and progressive work just one year later. Indeed, he made this movie as a deliberate answer to critics of "Birth of a Nation".

 There is also a surprising amount of nudity (!!!) in the Babylonian story. Not outright full nudity, but certainly skimpy outfits and see-through clothing on many of the women. I suppose it "flew" at the time because it was historical and artistic; the modern story (and the Jesus and France stories) have nothing close to nudity.

 Finally, another bizarre thought – as articulated by Calvin (Calvin & Hobbs)’s father: these old movies aren’t black & white because of the film technology available at the time; they’re in black & white because there really was NO color at that time in real life. The grainy, jerky, overly fast unnatural motions of people were the real way things were. Similarly, France in the late 19^th century was in color, but with the colors blended and melted into each other (Impressionist). Seurat was simply portraying the dotted view that was reality.