how to destroy love
by
Douglas Messerli
D.
W. Griffith, Hettie Gray Baker, Tod Browning, Anita Loos, Mary H. O'Connor.
Frank E. Woods (screenplay), D. W. Griffith (director) Intolerance: Love’s
Struggle Throughout the Ages / 1916
D.
W. Griffith’s 1916 masterwork Intolerance is one of the most legendary
and well-known of US silent classics. Chosen for inclusion in The National Film
Registry, this film is surely required viewing for anyone interested in US
cinema. But my guess is that most of filmgoers born after 1960 have never seen
the film. Even I had only seen it twice before I viewed it in order to write
this essay, and those viewings were stretched out over a period of 20-25 years,
making the work seem entirely new each of the three times I’ve watched it.
So perhaps a quick summary of its difficult to untangle narrative, which
even a seemingly indomitable essayist as Donald Eagan characterizes in his
introductory sentence as being one of the strangest of film epics ever made,
might be useful.
Reacting in part to the criticism
surrounding his otherwise astoundingly successful film the year before, The
Birth of a Nation, for which he was attacked for being racist in its
support of the Rebel cause in the Civil War and caused him to be perceived even
as un-American, Griffith decided to turn his attention to a grand work
expressing his outrage against intolerance throughout the ages. Apparently, he
could not recognize that his own vision about the situation of US blacks might
be recognized as simply another form of intolerance. Nonetheless, one has to
grant that it is one of the most remarkable and simply amazing apologias
against religious, political, social, and personal intolerance ever made.
What the director imagined was something that had never been done before
and has not so successfully been achieved again—except perhaps in the very
different form of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev (1966). Working with
four different scripts, four sets of casts, technicians, sets, costumes, and
shooting locations, and filming in the period of less than a year, Griffith
made basically 4 movies which he then cut and interspliced with each other,
working sometimes thematically, but mostly in terms of the film’s rhythms, to
create a diorama of injustice and intolerance reoccurring throughout the
history of mankind, from the ancient Babylonia of 539 B.C., to the Biblical
Judea c. AD 27, the French Renaissance of 1572, and then-contemporary US, c.
1914, the dozens of intercuts linked only by Lillian Gish rocking a child
endlessly in an action dedicated to Walt Whitman’s famous lines.
The first of these—actually filmed last
because of the construction needed for its lavish, mammoth sets—represents the
battles between the Babylonian Prince Belshazzar and Cyrus the Great of Persia.
In the episodes upon which Griffith focuses, Belshazzar (Alfred Paaget)
successfully resists the first of Cyrus’ (George Siegmann) attacks on the
Babylonian city surrounded by a wall so high and thick that it could support a
full chariot racing across its battlements and whose massive iron doors took
two sets of 4-5 men to pull the mechanical devices it took to open them.
After defeating the Persians, the legendary Feast of Belshazzar is
celebrated in an orgiastic-like celebration for several days—with no
handwriting on the wall nor visit of Daniel in this instance—which permits
Cyrus, now in league with the rival priest of the Babylonian gods, those
aligned with Bel-Marduk, to regroup and attack again, defeating Belshazzar and
his people, most of whom worship the sun-God Ishtar. Presumably the intolerance
in this section consists in the High Priest of Bel-Marduk’s (Tully Marshall)
traitorous defection from the more open-minded practices of Belshazzar and most
of his citizens. In this case, the villain’s actions seem motivated primarily
for his own attempts at power.
The epic stories also contain minor
figures, in this case The Mountain Girl (Constance Talmadge), a wild child who
might be described as the ancient equivalent to Calamity Jane, who becomes
loyal to the Prince when he grants her, almost miraculously, the permission to
marry who she wishes to or the possibility to not marry at all; and the man who
loves her, The Rhapsode (Elmer Clifton), a warrior-singer who is aligned with
Bel-Marduk, with whom The Mountain Girl flirts only so that she might obtain
further information about his liege’s plans of rebellion.
In at least two of these works, queer figures are portrayed. In this
first instance the queer figure is The Mountain Girl who is obviously a tomboy
who fights as a soldier, not unlike Joan of Arc, against Cyrus’ attacks, and
dies in her attempt to inform Belshazzar that Bel-Marduk and Cyrus and joined
forces to attack once again, the Prince at first refusing to believe her before
he faces the truth as his Kingdom is defeated and he and his lover, The
Princess Beloved (Seena Owen), are by oath forced to take up swords to their
own bodies.
In the orgiastic scenes with their
hundreds of vestal virgin dancers (eight of whom were Ruth St. Dennis and her
dancers) provides clear evidence in this 1916 film (unlike the simple hints of
Louis Feuillade’s A Roman Orgy of 1911) of lesbian love.
Finally, one has to mention yet again
the amazing set constructed for the Babylonian scenes, created without special
effects, that were never again so vast and cinematically convincing. Not even
DeMille’s Ben Hur could match it. The set was so large that Griffith, on
the advice of Allan Dawn, brought in a railroad flat car loaded with an
elevator to film the last celebratory scenes. Ancient warfare, moreover, has
never since been quite so convincing. For sheer splendor this part of the film
towers over all the others.
The second of these interlinked stories
through time is the shortest, a sort of winnowing down of the Biblical tales of
Christ’s actions and his last days before the crucifixion. Griffith obviously
could presume his audience’s knowledge of Christ’s outspoken statements against
intolerance and the symbology of his own crucifixion as representation of
intolerance itself.
Accordingly, we have no complex series of
events involved with these moments of the film. Only the secondary figures
aligned with the events of Christ’s life, the Pharisees’ self-congratulatory
prayer in the streets wherein they demand everyone around them stop all
activities; the Wedding at Cana wherein, when the hosts run of wine, Christ
turns water into wine; and the woman taken
in adultery about be stoned about
whom Christ responds "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast
a stone” become the major figures. There are also brief glimpses of Christ
carrying the cross and his final crucifixion. The “Nazarene” is performed
Howard Gaye, Mary, Christ’s mother briefly appears performed by Lillian
Langdon, and the Bride at Cana is acted by Bessie Love.
If there is a queer figure here it is
obviously Christ himself, whom the Pharisees and religious elders accuse of
imbibing in alcohol—a major subtheme of this film—of consorting with
adulterers, and of refusing to pray in the proper manner. Certainly, he is the
true outsider of this segment in a series of featured outsiders such as The
Mountain Girl, and in the next segment, Prosper Latour (Eugene Pallette), a
Catholic who has fallen in love with a Huguenot beauty, Brown Eyes (Margery
Wilson).
It seems strange for Griffith to have chosen the St. Bartholomew's Day
Massacre of Protestant Huguenots as one of his seminal events in the history of
“intolerance,” not because it doesn’t fit—indeed because it is perhaps the
clearest example of that word within the film. But it is a one of many such
internal battles fought throughout Europe during the Protestant Reformation,
and perhaps one the lesser remembered. Yet, given his previous alignment with
the Southern cause in the Civil War it is perhaps comprehensible that the
director would choose a local minority determined to live themselves in much
more spartan conditions than the majority of the populace, intimating as it
does also in his presentation of it the Egyptian’s murder of the Hebrew first
born.
In this instance, however, it was wholesale slaughter. King Charles IX
of France (Frank Bennett) is portrayed as an effeminate man-child who’d rather
play with toys and puppies than deal with political matters. Bennett’s
portrayal of him is obviously of a queer man, who holds his puppies in his
codpiece and kisses his friends with more passion that friendliness. He,
however, is man of peace who despite his mother’s disdain of the Huguenot’s of
being “unlike” them, he has convinced the court to remain neutral.
Things seem to run peacefully however,
despite his involvement in politics, evidenced in the example of a Catholic
man, Prosper Latour’s falling in love with a young Huguenot girl, Brown Eyes.
He courts her, and the two plan marriage. But meanwhile, mercenary soldiers and
other French nobles insist that the Huguenots have become dangerous, themselves
inciting riots, convincing Catherine who pressures the recalcitrant King to
finally take revenge of the religious minority. Unwillingly signing the
declaration of the massacre, Charles insists that if they need be killed they
must all be killed so that no one be left to accuse him of the horrible events.
By night their houses are marked with
chalk and by morning the massacre begins, with Prosper discovering the attacks
only after they have gotten underway. Brown Eyes’ father (Spottiswoode Aitken)
attempts to hold back the soldiers as long as he can, but Prosper, who has a
free pass, is nonetheless held back by the vengeful mercenaries, and by the
time he reaches his lover’s house, she and her family have been killed. He
lifts her into his arms and attempts to carry her off, only to himself be
slaughtered.
In all the stories told thus far, the believers and national figures who
were the subject of intolerance were destroyed, their martyrdom being their
only link. In the final “modern” story, the focus is on those of everyday and
ordinary life, who do not at all represent religious, political, and ever
larger social concerns. Given Griffith’s own alignment with the agrarian values
of the South, it is perhaps inevitable that his focus falls now upon the
Northern industrial society and the mill workers who are most tormented from
his strange perspective by not simply the industrialists such as his token
representative, Mill owner Arthur Jenkins (Sam De Grasse), but the moral and
righteous “uplifters,” basically presented as females without the ability to
land a husband, who while pretending to fight for the better care of children
and the moral uplift of industrial workers, actually take away their pleasures
in dancing and drink, and often abscond even with their children, seeing the
hard-working wives as unfit. One might argue that Griffith’s misogynistic
representation of these figures bears some resemblance to the Southern view of
abolitionists of the previous century.
In the director’s example, the owner of
the Mill only reduces the pay of his employees in order to fulfill the
financial needs of such organizations, one of them now run by Jenkins’ sister,
Mary J. Jenkins (Vera Lewis).
Not only do those lower wages send the
workers on strike, which Griffith depicts in remarkably realistic images, but
forces them to move into cities, where their living conditions become even
worse and where such transported individuals such as the Boy (Robert Harron, a
former Mill employee) join gangs such as that run by the Musketeer of the Slums
(Walter Long) and encourages former Mill women such as The Friendless One
(Miriam Cooper) to become prostitutes. Other former Mill workers, such as The
Dear One (Mae Marsh) and her father (Fred
Turner) find squalid conditions in
the city which lead to the father’s early death and the girl’s desperation.
When the Boy meets The Dear One, the two
fall in love, but when he promises to marry her and abandon the criminal life
he has lived as a gang member, the Musketeer plants a gun on him and
incriminates the Boy in a crime which sends him to prison. The Dear One,
meanwhile, bears their baby, but a visit from the Uplifters while she has run
downstairs to get some cough medicine, lead them to declare her unfit,
eventually taking away her child.
The Musketeer offers to find her child
and return him, but only as a ruse to get her into his bed. The Boy, freed from
prison, returns to his beloved Dear One to find her without their son and a
changed woman.
When the Boy is away, the Musketeer
returns to attempt to rape the Dear One, but his own girl The Friendless One,
perceiving what he is up to, takes up a gun and shoots her boyfriend from a
window, throwing it the apartment floor in her escape. When the Boy returns to
find the body on the floor, the police arrive to arrest him, and soon after he
is charged as guilty of the murder, sentenced to death.
A Kindly Officer (Tom Wilson),
perceiving what has probably happened attempts to convince the Governor (Ralph
Lewis) to commute the Boy’s hanging, without success. The Dear One also visits
the Governor in an attempt to convince him of her husband’s innocence, but
again without success. Finally, The Friendless One admits to the two her guilt,
and together they rush via a road speedster to outrace the Governor’s train.
They get the pardon, but barely reach the hangmen in time to stop it. At the
very last moment, the papers arrive, and the Boy is freed, their child
presumably returned to them.
In short, only in this last instance does intolerance fail to destroy
those effected. Interestingly, whereas in the other tales the queer figures
futilely attempted to fight against the various intolerances, this time there
is no queer figure to be found. Yet the innocents survive. I don’t know if
Griffith and his large roster of writers intended that to be a statement, but
it is there to be witnessed nonetheless. Griffith, even through his subtitle,
infers that if you destroy love of any kind, you destroy life, you destroy the
very life force of an entire people.
The images that Griffith uses to tell
this more complex “modern” story are often brilliant and reveal the direction
in which his later films will lead him, although by the late 1920s his work was
often described as having not kept abreast of the changes in the medium which
he had so brilliantly helped to define.
Los
Angeles, July 6, 2022
Reprinted
from World Cinema Review (July 2022).
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