Intolerance: The Birth of a Hollywood Controversy by darius kadivar
D.W. Griffith's Silent Epic Masterpiece and Enduring Film Legacy
“The silent film was not only a vigorous popular art; it was a universal language - Esperanto for the eyes”
–Film Critic Kevin Brownlow
American film pioneer David Wark Griffith is considered as one of the Founding Father's of Motion Pictures as an Art form with Russian Sergei Eisenstein. Paradoxically he is also the most controversial figure in film history for the same reasons. He was to dazzle the audience in 1915 with his masterpiece The Birth of a Nation the plot of which revolves around the intertwined fates of a southern and northern family before and after the American Civil War. The film set the basic concepts of film editing (particularly crosscut editing) and film narration widely used since. Yet despite the brilliant contribution to the Art form, the film was also to be quite justly accused of racism as well as for its openly Confederate sympathies. Depicting southern blacks as vicious and lascivious, their northern white allies as cunning, unscrupulous, and arrogant, and the film's southern whites as suffering repeated political and sexual indignities at the hands of white northerners and black southerners before literally being rescued by the gallant, hooded riders of the Ku Klux Klan. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was to call for the film's boycott and succeeded in forcing Griffith to cut out some controversial scenes out of his film (*). In response to the outcry, Griffith was to make another epic called Intolerance: Love's Struggle through the ages. Certainly one of Hollywood's Silent Era most extravagant masterpieces. Once again Griffith was to provoke controversial reactions. One of the major unnoticed revisions of History at the time was Griffith's very personal portrayal of Persian King Cyrus (**) as the bloodthirsty conqueror who destroys the peace loving and care free city of Babylon and enslaves its inhabitants. Strangely enough Griffith omits to mention what historians widely consider as a milestone of tolerance in human History as opposed to the film's title and that is: Cyrus' Liberation of the Jews captive in Babylon. Nor does the director mention the Cyrus Cylinder considered as the first and probably only existing Charter of Human Rights in Ancient Times. Released in four different versions, Intolerance aimed to outdo both The Birth of a Nation and spectacular European imports like Cabiria . Griffith decided to expand his narrative to encompass four stories from different periods of history, illustrating the persistence of intolerance and inhumanity through the ages …
 D.W. Griffith's Babylon episode in his 1916 film: Alfred Paget (Belshazzar) and Seena Owen (Princess Attarea) reign in Babylon. Center : Cyrus (George Seigmann) sets off to conquer Babylon and destroy it.
The man who would become America's most famous mythmaker was born in 1875 on a poor Kentucky farm. Griffith's father, a former Confederate officer wounded during the Civil War, died when Griffith was just ten. A quiet boy given to reading, Griffith had little formal education, but spent much of his free time in the library. As a young man he was determined to become a playwright and left home to learn his craft as an actor. For twelve years he crisscrossed the country, acting in minor productions, learning how to tell a story and how to sell it. He finally was to move behind the camera as a director at the Biograph Company . During his five years at Biograph, Griffith took the raw elements of moviemaking as they had evolved up to that time -- lighting, continuity, editing, acting -- and wrought a medium of extraordinary power and nuance. Early short films such as A Corner in Wheat (1909), Fighting Blood (1911), and Under Burning Skies (1912) show the hallmarks of Griffith's style already emerging: crosscut editing to build tension, acute observation of details to heighten reality, and the use of the camera as a vehicle for expounding his views on society. Determined to get beyond the short format films, he left Biograph and began working on what would be his most famous production Birth of a Nation and first masterpiece of cinema, bringing to film the status accorded to the visual and performing arts. A story of the Civil War, Birth of a Nation captured the violence, the spectacle, and the excitement of the war. Using extreme and dramatic camera angles and complexly interweaved edits, the film brought an event to life unlike any film had done before. The film for reason's explained above was a sad testament to the deep prejudice of the times and black audiences were outraged by the racist distortion of history and caused riots in a number of black communities.
(***)The following year, with the release of Intolerance, Griffith hoped to soothe the attacks his previous film was subject too. He nevertheless hoped to surpass The Birth of a Nation in its scale and sweep. For Intolerance , first shown in September 1916, Griffith devised a revolutionary new narrative structure that broke with preceding conventions while further perfecting his use of dramatic close-ups, camera movement, and parallel editing to create what is perhaps the cinema's foremost masterpiece and surely the most ambitious film produced before the 1920s. In 1914, prior to the release of The Birth of a Nation , he had begun making what would become the Modern Story in Intolerance , a dramatic indictment of societal injustice toward the poor in the United States. With the working title of The Mother and the Law , the new film included a powerful depiction of capitalism's brutal suppression of labor, an attack on capital punishment, and a forecast of the evils resulting from Prohibition. But seeking to outdo both The Birth of a Nation and spectacular European imports like Cabiria , as well as respond to critics of his earlier film, Griffith decided to expand his narrative to encompass four stories from different periods of history, illustrating the persistence of intolerance as a permenant and repeated trauma. Instead of telling them sequentially, Griffith intercut his modern story with the Judean story portraying the events leading to the Crucifixion of Christ; the French story dramatizing the massacre of the Huguenots; and, most spectacular of all, the Babylonian Story depicting, with massive sets and thousands of extras, the destruction of ancient Babylon and its civilization by the “imperialist forces” of Cyrus of Persia in league with the city's reactionary clergy opposed to the reforms introduced by Prince Belshazzar. As in other of his films, Griffith drew from his player's restrained yet emotional performances that were as extraordinary as the breathtaking sets. In its thematic complexity, too, Intolerance was a towering achievement. The director's indictment of the injustices of modern American society climaxed the Progressive era's cry for justice, while his depiction of antiquity, in a sharp break from traditionalist conceptions of " heathen " Babylon, revealed the ancient civilization as one of high ideals. The portrayal of the conflict between the conservative theocracy of the male god Bel and the reformism centered around the worship of the goddess Ishtar was yet another indication of Griffith's latent feminism. The pacifist message of Intolerance was consistent with America's antiwar mood in 1915 and 1916. Indeed, the film was initially quite popular on its release, but as the United States moved towards full-scale war with Germany in 1917, attendance began to fall off, and Intolerance ultimately failed at the box office. Overseas, Intolerance enjoyed a far more sustained success in countries like Russia and Japan. The film ran for ten years in the USSR and became the single most important influence on the Soviet filmmakers of the 1920s. Its Japanese popularity was equally crucial in inspiring the early Japanese directors to develop a new, more cinematic style. In France, Germany, and Scandinavia, Griffith's epic paved the way for a generation of filmmakers to create their greatest achievements, while in the United States, it was to influence such directors as Cecil B. DeMille, Rex Ingram, Erich von Stroheim, and King Vidor. Called by film historian Theodore Huff "the only film fugue," Griffith's masterpiece remains a timeless landmark of cinematic art that crystallized themes featured in his other works. (***)
Kodak Theater hosts the Annual Oscar's Ceremony in Hollywood. It is also one of the most visited tourist attractions for its life size scale reconstruction of Griffith's film Set of Babylon. © Kodak Theater
I had the privilege of seeing Intolerance in its full version as a film student in Strasbourg, France in the mid Nineties and in a beautiful old theater turned into a film club: The Odyssée . It was a strange experience and certainly a unique one. I was amazed by the sheer modernity of the subject and at the same time the proximity of emotions rendered by the actors. No doubt, expressions were exagerated and often stiff, yet the melodrama continues to exert genuine emotion in the spectator. Obviously as an Iranian I was annoyed by Griffith's negative portrayal of Cyrus the Great, but at the same time could not but admire the director's work and even feel sympathy for the fate of the Babylonian prince Belshazzar and that of his capital City Babylon. Retrospectively the film's universal theme resonates even more strongly with the sad situation in today's War torn Iraq. It is nearly like if you were to watch the religious rites and customs of a lost and long gone civilization, very much like what Howard Carter could have felt when he discovered the untouched Royal Tomb of Toutankhamon in the Valley of the Kings or the shiver that must have shook the passengers of the Titanic when the doomed cruiser hit the fatal iceberg . One definitively cannot feel this emotion generated by the film if one watches it on DVD or on Television. Film historian Kevin Brownlow whom I met many years later during a lecture at the French Cinémateque on British Director David Lean told me that “nothing, including digital remastering can render the true quality of the original Silent Era film projections. Not that it cannot be equaled or surpassed technically for it is just in Black and White but that the nearly crispy quality of the original film negatives have not escaped the test of time. In addition the sheer experience of seeing Silent films in their original form and environment can probably never be appreciated by any of us modern viewers.” True or False an assessment, I have often pondered on Brownlow's remarks . The digital Age we live in is a fascinating and ever growing era. It allows to render color to Black and White films, put modern age actors in old movies as it did in Forrest Gump or allow special effects that will hardly be matched in a more realistic manner in a near future unless as the wizards in ILM and other film Labs get to introduce a truly satisfying 3D experience. Quite recently a debate is rising in the film community worried that the Live experience of going to movie theaters is endangered by the fact that soon they will be released simultaneously on DVD, on the Net and in the movie theaters virtually on the same day ( see article ). Home Cinema and digital or plasma screens may well replace the traditional movie projections that so greatly contributed to the film Industry's recognition as an Art form. The history of filmmaking proves that Cinema has always adapted itself to changes. Silent Film stars like John Gilbert who shared the screen with Greta Garbo lost their fame for good with the talkies. Color brought a new dimension to films that was further expanded with Technicolor, cinemascope and other technological breakthroughs. TV and Video never quite equaled the movie experience until the advent of the DVD's crispy high quality displays including all the bonus packages that replace a Master Class for film students and film buffs with the additional film commentary by actors and directors. Yet despite the undeniable enhancement in both quality and content, the question remains. Are we witnessing the end of an Art form ? That of the movie experience as a live performance and the advent of another Art form : the « Home Cinema » already predicted and parodied by François Truffaut in his film adaptation of Ray Bradbury's futuristic nightmare Fahrenheit 451 ? Movie Theaters may well be replaced like the live Circus' that enthralled our elders. Why does the audience and the money making industry notice the progress made in film technology but ignores the fact that one of the Industry's most successful blockbuster directors the Great Steven Spielberg himself, continues to film with traditional 35 mm film in tribute to his peers? the answer to the question is certainly more philosophical than scientifically accurate. What fascinated Edison or the Lumières Brothers was the possibility of capturing life in a small box called a Camera and to then project it on the Big Screen. That this reality was manipulated with the Art of editing is beyond doubt. Yet it was the virtual sensation of capturing that reality that so fascinates us as spectators. It is also the fact that we share that experience with other unknown spectators in the dark movie theaters. Guissepe Tornatore rendered some of this nostalgia in his magnificent film Cinema Paradisio and the Taviani Brothers payed tribute to Griffith's Intolerance in their movie Good Morning Babylon about two bankrupt Italian architect brothers who end up creating the Sets of Griffith's Legendary film. Films be them historical should never be confused with Reality or historical facts as such, they are however most probably like any artform, when achieved, a reflection of our Times and in that they are historical statements be it of the films director or actors. Griffith's moral responsability and distorted version of History are questionnable and should be critisized in the light of historical facts. As an artist however his legacy is unquestionable and he deserves recognition. Yet he continues to generate controversy to this day. In December 2000, The Directors Guild of America decided to change, without membership consultation, the name of the D.W Griffth Award because of the director's racial tones in The Birth of a Nation . The award has had amongst its recipients Cinema Greats as Woody Allen, Orson Welles, Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, John Huston, Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Capra, John Ford and Cecil B. De Mille.
Taviani Brothers tribute to Griffith's Intolerance in their 1987 movie Good Morning Babylon
Sadly as the 1920s roared on, Griffith's films seemed more and more old-fashioned, and no longer appealed to the younger audiences. Although sharing the same thirst for artistic independance which drove him to create of The United Artists along with Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, he nevertheless became a Victorian storyteller, temperamentally and artistically out of sync with his times. Though he had almost single-handedly invented the art of modern cinema, Griffith spent the last fifteen years of his life unable to find work and died in a small Los Angeles hotel on July 23, 1948. Ironically his land mark on Hollywood lives on, for the Set of Intolerance was recreated at the Kodak Theater which annually hosts the Oscar ceremonies.
Not bad, a legacy, for a doomed Silent Era film director after all…
Author's notes:
D.W. Griffith's films Intolerance (1916)and The Birth of a Nation (1915) are available on DVD at amazon.com.
(*) See article on the controversy around The Birth of a Nation .
(**) Cyrus II known as Cyrus the Great founder of the Persian Empire.
(***) Analysis borrowed from William M.Drew author of D.W. Griffith's Intolerance: Its Genesis and Its Vision
(****) Recommended reading: Hollywood the Pioneers
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