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Day Two of the sulk allowed me to watch another on the Top 100 Project. Whilst not an easy film to watch, I can see why this is acclaimed.
XLV: D.W. Griffith, Intolerance (1916)
Stung accusations of racism in Birth of a Nation (1915), Griffith expanded a contemporary-set story into an epic, melodramatic parable about tolerance (and intolerance). The film consists of four threads, which intersect rather than being shown consecutively. One is set in the time of Babylon, and tells the story of the fall of a city and an empire, amid epic battles. The second is set in Judea and is a retelling of the Gospel story. The third is set in the sixteenth century in France and features the events leading up to St Bartholemew's Day's Massacre and the genocide of Hugeunots by Catholic forces. Finally a story of a woman deprived of man and then of baby, and then a raced to save a wrongly condemned man.
The intolerance tends to be religious, and often has a woman at the rough end of it - especially in the Babylonian and Modern sequence. The Modern sequence has a peculiar anti-feminist dystopia at its heart - a group of female reformers (suffragettes?) approach the daughter of an industrialist for financial aid, and funding the cause requires the company to slash wages by 10%. The resulting strike leads to rioting and despression, whilst the women work through a puritan agenda condemning drinki, dancing and sex.
Even in scratchy black and white this is impressive - the sets are gigantic (I vaguely recall Good Morning, Babylon partly about the making of it) and this is yer original cast of thousands, complete with elephants. Few of the characters have names aside for "real" historical figures, so it is difficult to identify with them; they are types (but then again, characters seem to be rarely named in films I've seen from this period). There is a remarkable amount of talent here - not only Griffith but Lilian Gish as the essentialised mother, director Todd Browning in a small role, Douglas Fairbanks in another and so on.
The version I saw was just short of three hours - I think the Killiam Shows Version although the DVD doesn't specify - and I had planned to watch it in two shifts. I did, but only really with a pit stop rather than early morning/late afternoon. It must have been pretty odd to watch it back in 1916 when feature were still intheir infancy - would audiences come and go? Apparently it was a flop.
You can clearly see an influence on Eisenstein here - especially on Strike (1924) and Battleship Potemkin (1925) - although the Russian pushes the (pre-continuity) editing style even further. Definitely recommended - and there is a car chase!
Totals: 45 [Cinema: 16; DVD: 27; TV: 2]
XLV: D.W. Griffith, Intolerance (1916)
Stung accusations of racism in Birth of a Nation (1915), Griffith expanded a contemporary-set story into an epic, melodramatic parable about tolerance (and intolerance). The film consists of four threads, which intersect rather than being shown consecutively. One is set in the time of Babylon, and tells the story of the fall of a city and an empire, amid epic battles. The second is set in Judea and is a retelling of the Gospel story. The third is set in the sixteenth century in France and features the events leading up to St Bartholemew's Day's Massacre and the genocide of Hugeunots by Catholic forces. Finally a story of a woman deprived of man and then of baby, and then a raced to save a wrongly condemned man.
The intolerance tends to be religious, and often has a woman at the rough end of it - especially in the Babylonian and Modern sequence. The Modern sequence has a peculiar anti-feminist dystopia at its heart - a group of female reformers (suffragettes?) approach the daughter of an industrialist for financial aid, and funding the cause requires the company to slash wages by 10%. The resulting strike leads to rioting and despression, whilst the women work through a puritan agenda condemning drinki, dancing and sex.
Even in scratchy black and white this is impressive - the sets are gigantic (I vaguely recall Good Morning, Babylon partly about the making of it) and this is yer original cast of thousands, complete with elephants. Few of the characters have names aside for "real" historical figures, so it is difficult to identify with them; they are types (but then again, characters seem to be rarely named in films I've seen from this period). There is a remarkable amount of talent here - not only Griffith but Lilian Gish as the essentialised mother, director Todd Browning in a small role, Douglas Fairbanks in another and so on.
The version I saw was just short of three hours - I think the Killiam Shows Version although the DVD doesn't specify - and I had planned to watch it in two shifts. I did, but only really with a pit stop rather than early morning/late afternoon. It must have been pretty odd to watch it back in 1916 when feature were still intheir infancy - would audiences come and go? Apparently it was a flop.
You can clearly see an influence on Eisenstein here - especially on Strike (1924) and Battleship Potemkin (1925) - although the Russian pushes the (pre-continuity) editing style even further. Definitely recommended - and there is a car chase!
Totals: 45 [Cinema: 16; DVD: 27; TV: 2]
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