I saw the 2002 Kino version with the cheesy soundtrack.
For me, this film reminds me of the recent Crash (the Oscar winner, not the Miata-smashing film), with it's cloying, lecturing style.
The first problem with the film is that it doesn't give equal time to all four stories. The Modern story gets the most time, followed by the the Babylon story, then distantly the French story, and reduced to almost nothing at all, the Crucifixion, which is so short that if you don't already know that story because you aren't Christian, you'll be completely lost.
The shorter lengths for some stories is probably a by-product of the fact that this film was supposed to be just the Modern story, and the other three were woven in, in response to the anti-racist response to The Birth of a Nation. Staggeringly hypocritical egomaniac Griffith apparently felt that his own intolerance should be tolerated, so I'm delighted that this film flopped at the box office. But this review should be about the film, not the times or director, so I'll try not to say more about him.
And in fact, that's another reason I don't rate this so highly. In today's times, we have higher standards. It's not enough to have a spectacle. You have to have a story, and it has to make sense. I don't care how expensive your film is (yes, that's right George Lucas). All I care about is: how did it affect me?
Much of the things were told are "intolerance" (over and over and over again) are NOT intolerance. They might be jealousy, or greed, or selfishness, or egomania, or revenge, or simple law-enforcement. But intolerance is a word, and it has an actual meaning. This film shreds it.
Interestingly, in all four periods, the largest intolerance is caused by religious groups or people, usually against other religious groups or people. And yet, the film ends with the ridiculous idea that somehow we'll be saved by the ghostly heavens. There's a cannon (where did that come from??) and we're told "perfect love shall bring peace forevermore. Instead of prison walls - Bloom flowery fields". What utter nonsense.
And it's never really clear what the cradle is all about. Some times it is used (even for a blink of an eye) to transition between time periods. Other times it's not. Is it supposed to be Jesus, as the heavenly light might suggest? Whatever.
There are some items of note for LGBT viewers:
The Duke of Anjou in the French story is portrayed as gay, which apparently he might have been. The intertitle calls him "effeminate" and he's degradingly shown playing with toys, but he's also shown receiving the attentions of another man, playing with some sort of rodents carried in a pouch in front of his manly bits. This is surely one of the earliest, frankest depictions of same-sex attraction in a major US film.
In the Babylon story, I couldn't figure out whether it was the Rhapsode or the Mountain Girl who was described as the female man. But that was another strange comment about gender that came early on in the film.
The film also contains quotes from two well-known gay people of the 19th century: Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde.
Unfortunately, the film doesn't really address anti-gay intolerance, such as the jailing of Oscar Wilde. It also doesn't really address racial intolerance, which is a telling omission from this racist filmmaker. He has a very narrow (intolerant) view of what constitutes intolerance.
But, disregarding what I said earlier about spectacle, this is certainly the film to see for it. Oddly the colour tinting really adds to it, in a way that full colour cannot do. I wish more films were made this way. The Babylon segment is surely worth it. It's the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King of its kind, with Babylon as Minas Tirith. But they had no computers. These people are crazy.
I think the Modern story could stand alone as a feature, as could the Babylon story. Even the French story might make a good short. I think the parts might be greater than their sum, actually.
For me, this film reminds me of the recent Crash (the Oscar winner, not the Miata-smashing film), with it's cloying, lecturing style.
The first problem with the film is that it doesn't give equal time to all four stories. The Modern story gets the most time, followed by the the Babylon story, then distantly the French story, and reduced to almost nothing at all, the Crucifixion, which is so short that if you don't already know that story because you aren't Christian, you'll be completely lost.
The shorter lengths for some stories is probably a by-product of the fact that this film was supposed to be just the Modern story, and the other three were woven in, in response to the anti-racist response to The Birth of a Nation. Staggeringly hypocritical egomaniac Griffith apparently felt that his own intolerance should be tolerated, so I'm delighted that this film flopped at the box office. But this review should be about the film, not the times or director, so I'll try not to say more about him.
And in fact, that's another reason I don't rate this so highly. In today's times, we have higher standards. It's not enough to have a spectacle. You have to have a story, and it has to make sense. I don't care how expensive your film is (yes, that's right George Lucas). All I care about is: how did it affect me?
Much of the things were told are "intolerance" (over and over and over again) are NOT intolerance. They might be jealousy, or greed, or selfishness, or egomania, or revenge, or simple law-enforcement. But intolerance is a word, and it has an actual meaning. This film shreds it.
Interestingly, in all four periods, the largest intolerance is caused by religious groups or people, usually against other religious groups or people. And yet, the film ends with the ridiculous idea that somehow we'll be saved by the ghostly heavens. There's a cannon (where did that come from??) and we're told "perfect love shall bring peace forevermore. Instead of prison walls - Bloom flowery fields". What utter nonsense.
And it's never really clear what the cradle is all about. Some times it is used (even for a blink of an eye) to transition between time periods. Other times it's not. Is it supposed to be Jesus, as the heavenly light might suggest? Whatever.
There are some items of note for LGBT viewers:
The Duke of Anjou in the French story is portrayed as gay, which apparently he might have been. The intertitle calls him "effeminate" and he's degradingly shown playing with toys, but he's also shown receiving the attentions of another man, playing with some sort of rodents carried in a pouch in front of his manly bits. This is surely one of the earliest, frankest depictions of same-sex attraction in a major US film.
In the Babylon story, I couldn't figure out whether it was the Rhapsode or the Mountain Girl who was described as the female man. But that was another strange comment about gender that came early on in the film.
The film also contains quotes from two well-known gay people of the 19th century: Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde.
Unfortunately, the film doesn't really address anti-gay intolerance, such as the jailing of Oscar Wilde. It also doesn't really address racial intolerance, which is a telling omission from this racist filmmaker. He has a very narrow (intolerant) view of what constitutes intolerance.
But, disregarding what I said earlier about spectacle, this is certainly the film to see for it. Oddly the colour tinting really adds to it, in a way that full colour cannot do. I wish more films were made this way. The Babylon segment is surely worth it. It's the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King of its kind, with Babylon as Minas Tirith. But they had no computers. These people are crazy.
I think the Modern story could stand alone as a feature, as could the Babylon story. Even the French story might make a good short. I think the parts might be greater than their sum, actually.