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THE AMERICAN FILM
For his next picture Griffith again chose an immense theme, so vast that the film became unwieldy and depressing, and thereby defeated its own purpose. He sought to convey the idea that intolerance pervades the spirits of all peoples, from past to present, dragging with it despair, murder, and ruin. The immensity of the idea (which would be turned down with scorn by any scenario department of to-day) was Griffith's undoing, for he was forced by the limits of time alone to treat the theme generally. Intolerance did not set out to tell a narrative; instead, it utilised four separate historical incidents, divided by centuries of time, to express one central theme. It has been said that Intolerance was the first attempt to use the film in its correct manner. The four incidents chosen by Griffith to illustrate his theme were the fall of Babylon; the intolerance of the world and the Pharisees towards Christ; the massacre of St. Bartholomew; and a modern story of capital and labour, set in an atmosphere of misunderstanding, vicious gambling dens and corrupt orphanages. These four separate stories were connected by a link, supplied by Walt Whitman's lines 'out of the cradle endlessly rocking,' which manifested itself in the form of Lilian Gish aimlessly rocking a cradle, and appeared at regular intervals throughout the course of the film. The four stories were developed slowly, gradually working up into a Griffith crescendo, with quadruple action in the climactic ending, rounded off by a touch of symbolism. The Persians approached Babylon; Christ was crucified; the Huguenots were butchered; but the young man in the modern story was saved by a miraculous 'last-minute-rescue.'
Intolerance was, and still is, the greatest spectacular film. Its ingredients, the sumptuous feast of Belshazzar, the wild attack on the massive walls of Babylon, the scene at Golgotha, the struggling horde of extras and the vast sets, have been at the back of every American producer's mind ever since. They are the urge and comfort of Mr. de Mille. They are indirectly responsible for the many imitations The Ten Commandments, Noah's Ark, and the Hungarian Sodom and Gomorrah, all of which failed because they lacked the fierce intensity of purpose of Griffith. Intolerance had the makings of a great film but failed because of its own immensity. A film, even in twelve reels, cannot embrace the width and depth of a theme such as Intolerance sought to carry, without the elimination of detail. Under these circumstances the theme at once becomes