Intolerance

Year: 1916

Grade: B-

Country: USA

Director: Griffith

Review

griffith responds to his birth of a nation critics by showing his more human side. i’ll have to see birth of a nation again, but from what i recall, i didn’t come away thinking the guy was some horrible racist, as most people paint him. a notable film for its scope, box office failure, ambitious theme, grand sets (which won’t ever be duplicated again (because of green screens and computers), and very commonplace direction. a bad thing, you say? i think it’s more a testament to griffith’s pioneering in the language and grammar of film that we may think of his close-ups and cutaways as commonplace. he set the american standard in many basic ways; for better or worse.

the cut i saw used a lot of stock classical music – lots of beethoven. some of it was well-chosen and some of it wasn’t. there are other, longer versions, with synth scores and organ scores and all sorts of crap.

Watched on TV