The most spectacular set ever built for a movie!

Intolerance is David Wark Griffith’s true masterpiece. It was released the year after the fatally flawed and infamous Birth of a Nation. While that was the first true Hollywood epic, Intolerance surpassed it on every level. In fact I don’t think any movie has ever or will ever seriously rival it for its ambitious scope and scale. This would be an amazing achievement for any era, but it’s positively staggering when you consider that Intolerance was made in 1916, when the movies as an art form were still in their cradle.

Originally Griffith planned a modern day morality tale about man’s inhumanity (or intolerance) to man. Eventually he decided to include 3 other periods in history, all connected by the titular theme. He then made the groundbreaking decision to inter-splice the stories together. An idea that was incredibly radical and far ahead of its time.

The modern day story, which of course now is also a period piece, concerns a young girl and boy who fall in love, get married and have a baby. All the while the events of their lives are being tragically affected by self righteous social reformers, who are intolerant of the lower class lifestyle that permits drinking and dancing.

The second most important story is set in ancient Babylon in the 6th Century BC. It concerns the fall of that once great civilization due to the jealousy of one holy man of another’s god. He betrays the king and plots with his brutal adversary. The sets for this section of the movie are breathtaking.

The most famous scene from the movie is the king’s awe inspiring hall in Babylon, where feasts and debauchery take place. The giant statues of elephants above sprawling steps are now iconic; they were reproduced for the Kodak Theater where the Academy Awards are now held. Of course today this would all be done with the magic of computers but with Griffith everything you see was painstakingly designed and crafted.

The first act ends with a battle in this Babylonian city. It is superlative. There is plenty of action and even gore, including several men getting beheaded by swords. There is also brief nudity in the Love Temple, where half naked women lounge around seductively, their breasts covered only with a transparent filmy material that leaves nothing to the imagination. Clearly DeMille was inspired by this section of the movie.

The other 2 stories play a smaller role and get much less screen time in this 3 hour and 17 minute epic. One tells of Christ and ends with his crucifixion. The other is set in Paris during the 16th Century dealing with the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre where Catholics slaughtered many Protestant Huguenots. Both are clear examples of religious intolerance.

Griffith used many once and future stars in bit barts. These include Douglas Fairbanks, Wallace Reid, Bessie Love, Elmo Lincoln, Erich von Stroheim, Donald Crisp, Eugene Pallette, Owen Moore and Monte Blue. Griffith, clearly an influence on many future directors, used several of them as actors here including King Vidor, Frank Borzage, W.S. Van Dyke and Tod Browning.

Mae Marsh gets top billing as the young woman in the modern story. She does a decent enough job but the movie is stolen from her by Constance Talmadge. She plays duel roles in fact. She is Marguerite de Valois in the French story but more importantly she plays the Mountain Girl in ancient Babylon. She is a spunky warrior girl with attitude and is the most memorable character of the dozens in the movie.

During the final 30 minutes or so Griffith speeds up the transitions between stories as each one builds to its climax. His muse Lillian Gish plays the Eternal Mother, shown as a woman rocking a baby in a cradle. This image is used as a device to signal a switch to another time period. There is so much going on character and story wise and so many details to notice that this movie just sort of washes over you. It would take several viewings to get your head completely around it.

In terms of absolute Hollywood spectacle Intolerance stands alone.
 

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