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D.W. Griffith: A Reappraisal

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tom...@hotmail.com

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Apr 15, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/15/98
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I have a movie fan friend who sensibly argues that D.W. Griffith was an over
rated director and produced very few good movies. That he was rediscovered by
the Museum of Modern Art in the 1950's and promoted by them as the "father of
film" was simply an accident due to the fact that so much of the good film and
and work of good directors had not been seen in decades. There were at least a
half dozen directors making better films than him at the same time.
Having now seen some DeMille films made in the same time period as Griffith's
most important workand also having seen his very poor later work, I tend to
agree with my friend. DW's work is stagey, hokey, has not aged well, is overly
sentimental. There is not much that is original about DW's work which can't be
attributed to his great cameramen (his editing, if he did it, was excellent).
His two greatest films were weighed down with a hick mentality (racism in
Birth of a Nation and childish historical viewpoints in Intolerance). They
just are not very good films, once you get past the spectacle).
Does anyone else agree that DW needs to be reappraised as a "great" director?
tom7tom

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FilmGene

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Apr 15, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/15/98
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<<Does anyone else agree that DW needs to be reappraised as a "great"
director?>>

Not me. Of course, he was overpraised by some idiots and by some who had other
agendas, but his contributions are irrefutable.

It is hard to agree with someone who calls Griffith's ideas "childish" and then
goes on to champion the work of DeMille! As good as DeMille was (and Walsh and
Collins and others) does nothing to erode the importance of Griffith. Even if
you ignore his features, surely the Biographs remain influential. And, while it
is easy to find fault with "The Birth of a Nation", it is absolutely undeniable
that it was the single film which proved that feature films were viable and its
reputation and even infamy gave the single most important publicity the medium
had to that point. The emotional power of the film is unmatched in film
history.


Gene Stavis, School of Visual Arts - NYC

Christopher Jacobs

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Apr 15, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/15/98
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tom...@hotmail.com wrote:
>
> His two greatest films were weighed down with a hick mentality (racism in
> Birth of a Nation and childish historical viewpoints in Intolerance). They
> just are not very good films, once you get past the spectacle).
> Does anyone else agree that DW needs to be reappraised as a "great" director?
> tom7tom
>
-------------------

Many if not most of his films are heavily sentimental, but at his best
he has a flair that manages to pull the viewer along with them (e.g. WAY
DOWN EAST and ORPHANS OF THE STORM). Have you ever seen THE MOTHER AND
THE LAW or HEARTS OF THE WORLD or BROKEN BLOSSOMS or ISN'T LIFE
WONDERFUL?

Christopher Jacobs

Michael Smith

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Apr 15, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/15/98
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Pretty ballsy to diss one of the pioneers of filmmaking. Hey, it at
least shows you have your own opinion. I do, however, very much
disagree with it. Have you seen films like A Corner In Wheat, Death's
Marathon, or The Mothering Heart. While I have seen only a fraction of
his Biograph films, having read up on them extensively, I think it is
safe to say that some of these films were far more sophisticated than
many of the other films of the time. One weird tidbit is that 3 or 4
years before Birth of a Nation, he did a film that was critical of the
Ku Klux Klan. That's not to defend what he did in Birth, or to say that
he didn't have racial prejudices, but it is noteworthy. Look at the
close-ups in Muskateers of Pig Alley, the cutting in Death's Marathon,
etc. I also think it wrong to claim that his cameraman was responsible
for anything that is great in his films. Billy Bitzer was a great
cameraman, but he only shot was Griffith directed him to. Anyway,
that's my feeble attempt to defend Griffith. I'm sure others in the
group could do a far better job.

Mike

S K E

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Apr 15, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/15/98
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On Wed, 15 Apr 1998 tom...@hotmail.com wrote:

> . . . D.W. Griffith was an over


> rated director and produced very few good movies. That he was rediscovered by
> the Museum of Modern Art in the 1950's and promoted by them as the "father of
> film" was simply an accident due to the fact that so much of the good film and

> and work of good directors had not been seen in decades. . . . DW's work
> is stagey, hokey, has not aged well, is overly sentimental. . . . Does


> anyone else agree that DW needs to be reappraised as a "great" director?

Griffith and his films were far from perfect, but *they are indeed
great, of lasting importance, and merit watching and sharing.*

*Some* Griffith films, by post-World War I standards, are indeed "stagey,
hokey, [and have] not aged well," but Griffith knew how to make even the
most maudlin material real and believable. Look at _Way Down East_ for a
good example. Modern feminists have praised Lillian Gish's assertive
portrayal of Anna Moore when she protests against the double sexual
standard to which she is subjected--a far cay from the stereotypes
surrounding Griffith *and* Miss Gish.

We *know* that Anna Moore will be rescued from the waterfall and
vindicated, but we like to see how it happens. *That's* why
that rescue scene still draws whoops and cheers as wild as anything
Harrison Ford's or Bruce Willis's characters may do today. Ditto for when
Miss Gish's Henriette Girard (in _Orphans of the Storm_) is saved from
losing her head . . .

*Keep in mind that we need to judge silent films not only from our own
perspective, but from that of the era in which they were made. What
we might see as hokey and cliched was fresh and new when Griffith and
his contemporaries did it!*

Film, in its infancy, was just as exciting as the Internet is for us
today. Imagine what people thought of art titles, tinting, and two-strip
Technicolor--not to mention the basic language of film, the art of editing
and camera work which Griffith, more than any person in history, founded
and used. For people in the first part of this century, "primitive"
films like Griffith's Biograph shorts, or similar work by the likes of
Edison, Melies, or Hepworth, were just as exciting--and as important--as
the invention of Unix, hypertext, or the microprocessor itself! Indeed,
in terms of technology, economics, and social impact, today's computer
industry offers us perhaps the closest modern parallel to the early film
industry. And Griffith was and is every bit as important to film as Bill
Gates is to computers today! Griffith, in fact, envisioned film-oriented
libraries where people could learn about anything they wanted through
film. Does this sound a bit like the Net?

As James Agee very eloquently wrote, Griffith achieved what no
other known person had achieved. Agee compared seeing Griffith's work to
seeing the first use of the wheel or lever, or the first use of language.
(I don't have the exact quote at hand tonight--does anyone else have it?)
No, Griffith, contrary to what his disciples, from Lillian Gish and Billy
Bitzer on down sometimes at least seemed to imply, did *not* do it alone,
but he certainly led the way in devising and institutionalizing the
language that formed the foundation for all film, not to mention
television and other forms of video, including Internet video!

Granted, Griffith's view of history--and of issues involving race, class,
gender, and the like--was often naive and, at worst,
distorted and just plain wrong. No one with an IQ over one's shoe size
would agree with the racism, sexism, and pure historical misinformation
which pervades the likes of _The Birth of a Nation_, but no one can deny
its importance in film, cultural, and other history. It forever changed
film from being perceived as a mere toy into a serious medium and social
force comparable in its impact and controversy to the Net today!

Yes, _Intolerance_, by today's standards, is simplistic and naive in
places, but it holds up, too, and always will, as an overwhelming work of
art comparable to a great symphony, or, better yet, a fugue. Its message
is eternal--intolerance has crippled human understanding and progress
throughout history, but we *can* choose to stop letting history repeat
itself. As Arnold Toynbee noted, sadly, "what we learn from history is
that we do not learn." Griffith's _Intolerance_ seems to agree with
Toynbee here, but makes it clear that we *can* learn and act to assure a
better future.

Of course, in addition to these two great if flawed Griffith filmic
masterworks, you only need watch his Biograph shorts to see how quickly
his--and film's--language evolved. From there, it was a short step to
_Judith of Bethulia_ and beyond . . . Griffith, IMO, was at his best in
such lyrical films as _Broken Blossoms_, a film which shakes and stuns
audiences into literal tears almost 80 years after it first did.

As is widely known, Griffith had a hard time modifying his films to fit
the popular tastes of the 1920s, struggling to recapture the success he
had in the 1910s. However, his last film, _The Struggle_--a powerful
portrayal of alcoholism made 14 years before _The Lost Weekend_--is widely
praised today, while it was panned in 1931. Meanwhile, his second-to-last
film, _Abraham Lincoln_ (1930), praised then, is today considered static
and stagey.

But his weaknesses--and he had many--cannot overshadow his great and
enduring contributions to the art of film. Even Cecil B. de Mille--no
slouch in the self-esteem department--admitted that "Griffith had no
rivals. He was the teacher of us all."

If you haven't, take a look at _The Films of D. W. Griffith_ by Edward
Wagenknecht and Anthony Slide for what I think the best--and most
balanced--book about Griffith's films. The best biography I've seen of
him yet is Richard Schickel's _D. W. Griffith: An American Life_.

Please let me know your reactions to all this!

Meanwhile, does anyone know of Leona Phillips, a Griffith superfan who
wrote a book called _D. W. Griffith: Titan of the Film Art_? It would be
great to have her in this newsgroup.

Keep watching those silents, keep thinking and researching, keep posting!

Scott Enk c):-)>=

se...@execpc.com


Bruce Calvert

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Apr 15, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/15/98
to
>I have a movie fan friend who sensibly argues that D.W. Griffith was an over

>rated director and produced very few good movies. That he was rediscovered by
>the Museum of Modern Art in the 1950's and promoted by them as the "father of
>film" was simply an accident due to the fact that so much of the good film and
>and work of good directors had not been seen in decades. There were at least a
>half dozen directors making better films than him at the same time.
>Having now seen some DeMille films made in the same time period as Griffith's
>most important workand also having seen his very poor later work, I tend to
>agree with my friend. DW's work is stagey, hokey, has not aged well, is overly
>sentimental. There is not much that is original about DW's work which can't be
>attributed to his great cameramen (his editing, if he did it, was excellent).
>His two greatest films were weighed down with a hick mentality (racism in
>Birth of a Nation and childish historical viewpoints in Intolerance). They
>just are not very good films, once you get past the spectacle).
>Does anyone else agree that DW needs to be reappraised as a "great" director?
 
If you really think that Griffith wasn't that great, you should watch some Edison, Lubin, or Selig shorts from the 1908-1913 period.  Besides having simple stories, and being stagey, hokey, sentimental, racist, etc. they pale in comparison to even Griffith's average Biograph work.
 
Broken Blossoms is one of my favorite Griffith films.  While some of the titles are sentimental and hokey, and Barthlemess is not really Asian, it is still a powerful film.  It took balls for Griffith to make a tragedy like this when the rest of the industry was putting out "feel-good" films.
 
On the other hand, the mark of a really good critical book on Griffith is how the writer handles the racism of Birth.  I think that the best that I've read is Chapter 4 of Scott Simmons' book The Films of D.W. Griffith.
 
Don't forget that Griffith was a product of his time.  His sentimental hokum was wildly popular up to Way Down East, put when the times changed in the 1920's, he couldn't change with them.  And to single out Griffith because of the racist Birth is unfair, because just about every movie about blacks during the silent period was racist.  Griffith just made a wildly entertaining film that made lots of money that was also racist.  African-American's were seldom shown on the silent screen, and when they were it was as gamblers or watermelon eaters or bit parts as railroad porters or maids.
 
While DeMille was a more "modern" director, his films were pretty hokey too.  In the twenties, he made a lot of wildly expensive, flashy morality tales that focused on materialism.  Also, how many talented actors and actresses (and directors) started their careers with Griffith, as compared to those who DeMille developed?
 
Griffith was overrated in the past, because he promoted himself well and the output of other talented directors like Maurice Tourneur was not available for reappraisal.
 
 
 

ChaneyFan

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Apr 16, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/16/98
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>>>Does anyone else agree that DW needs to be reappraised as a "great"
director?

(Jon reaches for his nitroglycerin tablets due to the shock of seeing actual
discussion in this newsgroup...) Well, Tom, tell us what you *really* think.
Don't hold back now!

I would put Griffith somewhere in between the two camps. Not the greatest
director of all time, but certainly a major influence on the formative years of
film. Actually, during his Biograph years, I think Griffith was head and
shoulders above everyone, but by 1923, he was already second-rank. Another way
to say this is that if I had to list the 10 best films of 1911, they would all
be Griffith Biographs. The 10 best films of 1912 would be Griffith Biographs.
The 10 best films of 1913 would be Griffith Biographs. By 1917, I doubt
Griffith would have many films at all in the best 10 of that year or any after
it. BROKEN BLOSSOMS and ORPHANS OF THE STORM are great films and would
qualify. WAY DOWN EAST might. But from 1923 on, he wouldn't hit the top 100
in any year. Is he less important than DeMille. No, probably not. They had
different styles and made different contributions.

For those interested in Griffith alternatives, there is a nice little booklet
done by Richard Koszarski published as part of a 1976 Walker Art Center series
in Minneapolis. It's called "The Rivals of D.W. Griffith" and you can
sometimes find it at used specialty bookshops like Larry Edmunds or at dealers
tables at film festivals. It's a 60-page booklet with pictures and commentary
on some of the other major directors/producers working in the teens. Very
interesting if you enjoy this era and have an interest in anyone other than
Griffith.
===============================
Jon Mirsalis
e-mail: Chan...@aol.com
Jon's Film Sites: http://members.aol.com/ChaneyFan/jonfilm.htm
Lon Chaney Home Page: http://members.aol.com/ChaneyFan

jmar...@hotmail.com

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Apr 16, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/16/98
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In one film course I took, we were often shown films that were "historically
important" but unwatchable. These films were shown because they had
innovations, novelties, etc. But they were bad films.
DW's films are bad. It is no use insisting that they are great when very few
people can sit through Intolerance without feeling as if they are having root
canal done. And in order to get them to sit through Birth of a Nation, he had
to exploit some of the most explosive prejudices in our history. WHo couldn't
have done as much?
DW's last film shows what he clearly was-a victorian sentimentalist with an
eye for editing and the last minute rescue.
Way down east is way too long-filled with country bumpkin stereotypes that are
cartoonish. Broken Blossoms has its moments but is equally absurd in others.
His biograph shorts were all hit and miss affairs.
(crouching down to avoid the volley of tomatoes!)
tom7tom


In article <199804160438...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,


chan...@aol.com (ChaneyFan) wrote:
>
> >>>Does anyone else agree that DW needs to be reappraised as a "great"
> director?
>

Michael Smith

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Apr 16, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/16/98
to

DW's films are bad. It is no use insisting that they are great when very
few people can sit through Intolerance without feeling as if they are
having root canal done. And in order to get them to sit through Birth of
a Nation, he had to exploit some of the most explosive prejudices in our
history. WHo couldn't have done as much? DW's last film shows what he
clearly was-a victorian sentimentalist with an eye for editing and the
last minute rescue. Way down east is way too long-filled with country
bumpkin stereotypes that are cartoonish. Broken Blossoms has its moments
but is equally absurd in others. His biograph shorts were all hit and
miss affairs. (crouching down to avoid the volley of tomatoes!)
tom7tom

------------------------

Your broad generalizations are specious. Just because the people in
your film course weren't fans doesn't mean that they are a good
representation of silent film fans. I found Intolerance easier to sit
through than many short comedies. Just curious, which films do you
consider "watchable"?

Mike

db...@uno.edu

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Apr 16, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/16/98
to

In article <6h2a9c$fl8$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,

tom...@hotmail.com wrote:
>
> I have a movie fan friend who sensibly argues that D.W. Griffith was an over
> rated director and produced very few good movies. That he was rediscovered by
> the Museum of Modern Art in the 1950's and promoted by them as the "father of
> film" was simply an accident due to the fact that so much of the good film and
> and work of good directors had not been seen in decades. There were at least a
> half dozen directors making better films than him at the same time.
> Having now seen some DeMille films made in the same time period as Griffith's
> most important workand also having seen his very poor later work, I tend to
> agree with my friend. DW's work is stagey, hokey, has not aged well, is overly
> sentimental. There is not much that is original about DW's work which can't be
> attributed to his great cameramen (his editing, if he did it, was excellent).
> His two greatest films were weighed down with a hick mentality (racism in
> Birth of a Nation and childish historical viewpoints in Intolerance). They
> just are not very good films, once you get past the spectacle).
> Does anyone else agree that DW needs to be reappraised as a "great" director?
> tom7tom

Oh wow... I never thought about it that way.
Maybe I should just throw away the 75 megabytes
of space and two months of work I've devoted to
making the Griffith Quicktime site.

David B. Pearson
DG: Excerpts from Griffith's Greatest Films
http://www.uno.edu/~drcom/Griffith

EckHarDT50

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Apr 16, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/16/98
to

There is, in fact, an exhaustive reexamination and reappraisal of Griffth going
on right now and it will continue for several years.
Starting with last year's Pordenone silent film festival, ALL of Griffith's
surviving films are being screened by and for the world's film scholars and
writers in the order they were produced.
One response of those present for the screening of all of 1908 this past
october was that only by seeing all of these films could one realize what it
must have been like for him to relentlessly grind out one film (sausages he
called them) after another. The fact that he could be creative and clever and
innovative with so many of them is truly remarkable. Grifith did as much to
transform the movies in those early years as he did with BOAN and other later
films.

I suspect that in the end, there will be a very interesting "new" and more
solidly based view of Griffith and his contributions. But he will always be
regarded as one of the eariest great masters of the craft --even if his
once-popular films don't provoke the same enthusiasm today that they once did.
Several people here have mentioned "A Corner in Wheat" and I'd like to add
something which I experienced a few years ago as an example of the fact that
Griffith's best work does still have the power to move even modern audiences.
A group of early films were screened for an audience at the Univeristy of
Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The audience was mostly young college students
who were obviously there for a good time/laugh. They started laughing the
second the first introductory title went up on the screen. And continued
laughing-- until A Corner in Wheat was shown. There was a half hearted laugh
during the first shot. Then silence, in fact a stillness, while the rest of the
film ran. They were completely engrossed. At the end there was applause (!)
It's not for nothing that this film is considered a masterpiece.
In the end, in spite of much valid criticism, Griffith will always be judged
on his considerable body of excellent work, not on his failures.
Joe Eckhardt

Bruce Calvert

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Apr 16, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/16/98
to

ChaneyFan wrote in message
<199804160438...@ladder01.news.aol.com>...

>For those interested in Griffith alternatives, there is a nice little
booklet
>done by Richard Koszarski published as part of a 1976 Walker Art Center
series
>in Minneapolis. It's called "The Rivals of D.W. Griffith" and you can
>sometimes find it at used specialty bookshops like Larry Edmunds or at
dealers
>tables at film festivals. It's a 60-page booklet with pictures and
commentary
>on some of the other major directors/producers working in the teens. Very
>interesting if you enjoy this era and have an interest in anyone other than
>Griffith.


I second Jon's recommendation. This booklet has articles by Kozarski,
Anthony Slide, William K. Everson, Kevin Brownlow, Edward Wagenknecht and
others. Each one profiles a film by a different director. It also includes
some foreign films/directors from the 1913-1918 period. The last few pages
contain some tantalizing stills from lost films of the period.

Moviephile

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Apr 17, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/17/98
to

I'm happy that his work is still around. Not lost, not in a archive in Slobonia
where it can't be touched. We know his work so there is no guessing of what
film might have been.
I wish we had that luxury with all directors.
I have seen a lot of D.W.'s work and I know Jon will agree, it helps to see
Birth of Nation etc. on a large screen with a talented organist at the
keyboard. Otherwise crank up the fps so you can say you have seen it.

D.W. (coincidence?) Atkinson


D.W. Atkinson

http://members.aol.com/Cinesation


ChaneyFan

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Apr 17, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/17/98
to

>>>Just because the people in your film course weren't fans doesn't mean that
they are a good representation of silent film fans.

Yes, I agree with Mike. And of course the *real* question is: in your film
course where you saw INTOLERANCE, which tinted 35mm print did you see and which
orchestra accompanied it live?

I assume of course you have the sense not to judge a film like this based on
seeing a b/w 16mm in dead silence or (gasp!) even worse, a video tape of it.
This is like taking an Art History course where all the images are presented to
the class in 3rd generation b/w photocopies.

Chris Dashiell

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Apr 17, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/17/98
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Show me another director who was *moving* the camera like
Griffith was in the teens. Hell, in the early 20s other Hollywood
films were still not moving the camera. See Alan Dwan's ROBIN
HOOD for example (a good movie) - not a single moving shot in
the film.
The oddity of Griffith was that he combined a great sense of
technical and stylistic innovation with a very old-fashioned, Victorian
sensibility. It's one of the great ironies of cinema history that THE
BIRTH OF A NATION, the film that brought movies to another level
in style, was reactionary in content.
There's been a little bit of a backlash against Griffith as innovator
lately. But as good as directors like Tourneur or DeMille could be,
they just didn't have the impact on the *craft* of filmmaking that
Griffith did. The man practically invented the art of film editing.

Dashiell


Christopher Jacobs

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Apr 17, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/17/98
to

Michael Smith wrote:
>
> DW's films are bad. It is no use insisting that they are great when very
> few people can sit through Intolerance without feeling as if they are
> having root canal done.

-----------------

When I first saw INTOLERANCE I was 17 and was blown away by it. As a
high school senior I thought it was one of the greatest films I had ever
seen silent or sound (and I'd only seen a few silents by that time). A
film collector friend in his 20s showed me his 8mm print, synchronizing
records on his stereo throughout the film. I now have seen enough other
films and other Griffith to readjust my assessment of it in relation to
what else was going on and what else he did, but it remains impressive
and is still ahead of its time in concept. Since then I have also
acquired my own 16mm tinted print from MoMA, which I have run for small
but INTERESTED groups including college-age people (not film class
students looking for "a easy A"), who have been equally impressed.

Christopher Jacobs
http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/cjacobs/Reviews.htm

Michael Smith

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Apr 17, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/17/98
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Just to clarify something that Christopher Jacobs quoted:

>Michael Smith wrote:

> DW's films are bad. It is no use insisting that they are great when
>very few people can sit through Intolerance without feeling as if they
>are having root canal done.

I just wanted to state that I was quoting this paragraph and didn't
author it.

Mike

tom...@hotmail.com

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Apr 17, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/17/98
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I have seen Intolerance six times. After each viewing, I was told that my
negative reactions were due to seeing a bad print. So, dutifully, I would
seek out another print. I found an excellent print in a university library.
Again, I was unimpressed. DW supporters told me that I had to see a REALLY
good print. I recently saw the Kino release. I saw no significant difference
in film quality between that one and the University library version. It
remains an unwatchable film. Even acquaintances who dearly love silent
movies and will sit through almost anything from the teens and
twenties, find little in Intolerance to hold their attention and cannot
get through what seems like an eternity of gratuitous crosscutting of
stagey scenarios.
I agree that DW had a strong intuitive feel for editing in some of his films.
In other films, though, it is clear that DW has no idea when to call
"Cut!" The long country bumpkin episodes in many of his films (Way down
East is just one of many examples) are simply crude cartoonish depictions
that make his films leadfooted and would have ended up on the editing room
floor of someone who truly understood pacing. How unfortunate that his best
editing is put to the service of racism (the ride of the Klan IS impressive).
I can assure you that the film class I took was filled with students deeply
interested in film. We spoke about Keaton, Lang, Hitchcock, etc, as earlier
generations spoke of Dickens, Fielding and so forth. While many directors
gained new fans as a result of that class, the teacher was often at a loss to
convince us, after viewing his work, that his films were enjoyable or
interesting when they plainly were not.

tom7tom

article <3536FE...@badlands.nodak.edu>,


Christopher Jacobs <chja...@badlands.nodak.edu> wrote:
>
> Michael Smith wrote:
> >
> > DW's films are bad. It is no use insisting that they are great when very
> > few people can sit through Intolerance without feeling as if they are
> > having root canal done.
>

> -----------------
>
> When I first saw INTOLERANCE I was 17 and was blown away by it. As a
> high school senior I thought it was one of the greatest films I had ever
> seen silent or sound (and I'd only seen a few silents by that time). A
> film collector friend in his 20s showed me his 8mm print, synchronizing
> records on his stereo throughout the film. I now have seen enough other
> films and other Griffith to readjust my assessment of it in relation to
> what else was going on and what else he did, but it remains impressive
> and is still ahead of its time in concept. Since then I have also
> acquired my own 16mm tinted print from MoMA, which I have run for small
> but INTERESTED groups including college-age people (not film class
> students looking for "a easy A"), who have been equally impressed.
>
> Christopher Jacobs
> http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/cjacobs/Reviews.htm
>

Jay Schwartz

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Apr 17, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/17/98
to

jmar...@hotmail.com wrote:

>In one film course I took, we were often shown films that were "historically
>important" but unwatchable. These films were shown because they had
>innovations, novelties, etc. But they were bad films.

>DW's films are bad. It is no use insisting that they are great when very few
>people can sit through Intolerance without feeling as if they are having root
>canal done.


What survey have you checked for the above statement of fact? Or did
you glance at your fellow modern classmates, who probably can't stay
awake through ANY black and white film?

I think we are reaching a cultural impasse where, lacking any
grounding in any of the past not obviously necessary for bare bones
survival in a rapidly changing world, future generations will lack an
understanding of ANYTHING from before their time. And they won;t
really need to.

Knowing just a little about silent film at the time, I personally
found my first viewing of INTOLERANCE to be fascinating and thrilling,
both for its sheer scale of spectacle and production, and for its
dramatic impact. I was about sixteen I think, and hardly a film
scholar. I admit to not having the same taste as the mass public then,
and probably do much less so today.

----------------------------
Secret Cinema website:
http://www.voicenet.com/~jschwart


SRoweCanoe

unread,
Apr 17, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/17/98
to

In article <6h5135$1or$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, jmar...@hotmail.com writes:

>And in order to get them to sit through Birth of a Nation, he had
>to exploit some of the most explosive prejudices in our history. WHo couldn't
>have done as much?

>Way down east is way too long-filled with country bumpkin stereotypes that
>are
>cartoonish. Broken Blossoms has its moments but is equally absurd in others.
>His biograph shorts were all hit and miss affairs.
>(crouching down to avoid the volley of tomatoes!)

At least you know your views are flame bait!
I really don't think that Griffith realize that he was exploiting prejudices
and was surprised at the controvesary. Certainly humor of this period is
filled with much of the same material (Ever see the 30s Wonder Bar, with "Going
to Heaven on a mule? )
I think alot of us see BOAN despite the racism, not because of it.

You thought Broken Blossoms was absurd? Hmm.
And yes, Way Down East's comic elements were menat to be cartoonish (although
when they play was written - cartoons (comic strips) and films were probably
equaly
"in depth". Say can we call the stereotyping of NewEnglanders racism too?*

No accounting for taste, but to take a nod from the Sennett thread; I'd rather
watch a DW Griffith film than a Jim Carney film...

Steven Rowe * comment meant rhetoricaly


Christopher Jacobs

unread,
Apr 17, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/17/98
to

Chris Dashiell wrote:
>
> Show me another director who was *moving* the camera like
> Griffith was in the teens.

----------

There weren't many, but there were a few. SECOND IN COMMAND (1915)
directed by William J. Bowman and photographed by William Alder, has
almost non-stop tracking and dolly shots, so much so that it can be
distracting--although the film as a whole is not particularly
engrossing. Possibly it was an experiment to see the effect of a camera
that won't stay still (cf. TITANIC today), a technique exploited mainly
in long-shots by the Italian CABIRIA (1914). Even TRAFFIC IN SOULS
(1913) has some moving camera shots and amazingly sophisticated editing,
but again is not as compelling as most Griffith of the period. (Even THE
GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY mounted the camera on a moving train for one shot in
1903 and also panned and tilted to follow the actors.)

Christopher Jacobs

ChaneyFan

unread,
Apr 18, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/18/98
to

>>>The man practically invented the art of film editing.

Well, not really. The close-up, rapid cross-cutting, and many other techniques
attributed to Griffith were all done by others before him. But what DWG *did*
do is combine all of these techniques with a solid narrative style, which is
what made the difference. I think this is best exemplified with ORPHANS OF THE
STORM (his best film IMO), but you can see it 10 years early in many of his
fine Biograph shorts. But even in the Biograph years, there was other fine
work going on. Take a look at Lois Weber's SUSPENSE (1913) sometime to see the
zenith of film editing and a combination of narrative and film technique that
knocks you out of your seat (Oh yeah, and a 6-second appearance of Lon Chaney!)

A few people like Griffith and (later) John Ford have been deified by many in
the academic film community. They were superb directors who made major
contributions to the art form. But frankly, they are simply well-known,
well-studied filmmakers and get a disproportionate share of attention. Many
others of the same era were doing similarly impressive films. Why carp? There
are lots of great silent films and lots of great silent filmmakers.

ChaneyFan

unread,
Apr 18, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/18/98
to

>>>I recently saw the Kino release. I saw no significant difference in film
quality between that one and the University library version.

So I think you have just answered my thread from yesterday. It sounds like the
best you have ever seen is a 16mm dupe print, or maybe the Kino video??? And
you are judging the film based on that?

Let's put this in perspective: In the year 2080, a film discussion group
(alt.movies.non-holographic, done then with cerebral implants) is discussing
the merits of a very old classic film. The conversation goes something like
this:

Zeek: Is it just me, or do you guys think TITANIC (1997) is a crashing bore?
I mean, they say that film had matured by the late 20th century, but I just
can't believe this thing won an Oscar (the old award they gave before the
Zonkwog Honor became the top media award).

EZoog: I think you're missing the point Zeek. The version we have today is
missing the iceberg sequence and the color has been artificially recreated
after the original faded. It was a painstaking job, but at least they've
restored the film to almost it's original 2 hr and 15 min length.

Zeek: Yeh, but it just isn't exciting!

EZoog: Are you watching this on the 2 cm wristband display or a kingsize 9 x
16 cm LCD palm viewer?

Zeek: Well, OK, I've only seen it on the 2 cm, and I can't actually tell Kate
Winslow from Lennert DeCipria, but the boat looks so tiny, I just don't
understand why they couldn't have used a hovercraft and lifted the damn thing
out of the water before it sank. Were these people stupid back then or
something?

CyberZone: I'd like to butt in here and point out that the current extant
version has these awful computerized recreations where they re-image the
characters for the missing scenes. It looks really fake.

Gen-QGal: Well, I don't know how you guys can watch these 2-D movies anyway.
Once HoloVision came in, they should have just burned these old color films and
reclaimed the valuable acetate.

MoonBoy: My grandfather said he saw it when it came out and said it was really
something. This was back when they actually ran films in big arenas called
movie theaters and you'd, like, sit with 100s of strangers you didn't know and
watch it.

Gen-QGal: Ewwww! Gross! Gag me with a LaserPerm!

MoonBoy: Yeh, sounds kinky. But by grandad said it was immense. I mean, when
the ship went down the picture was like 80 meters high, and even in 2D it was a
tremendously exciting experience.

CyberZone: Get out! No way!

MoonBoy: No, really. My grandad said that the way we watch films now, on
little tiny LCD screens, with tiny speakers, watching alone in our Zen Boxes is
nothing at all like what the original movie experience was. He said it is
almost impossible today to recreate the experience of what it must have been
like to see these old films in beautiful prints, the way they were intended to
be shown.

Zeek: Well, I still think it's a rotten movie.

MoonBoy: You know, my grandad said that some people thought that when it came
out too, but we still can't judge it ourselves today seeing the poor quality,
cut, partially reconstructed versions with the crummy inserted re-imaged scenes
that are available.

EZoog: I hear that down on earth there's a private collector that actually has
the complete 2 hr 40 min version on the original 53mm film they used to use
before everything went to OptoDisc. I'd sure love to see that print some day,
but since the Copyright Re-Extension Act of 2015, it won't go p.d. until 2122
so we may never get to see it.

CyberZone: Say, not to change the subject, but I'm really interested in that
pre-holo era and wondered if anyone had ever seen SCHINDLER'S LIST or THE COLOR
PURPLE, two of the rare films directed by one of my favorite directors, Steven
Spielberg.

MoonBoy: No. Unfortunately these are both lost.

Jay Schwartz

unread,
Apr 18, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/18/98
to

chan...@aol.com (ChaneyFan) wrote:

>Yes, I agree with Mike. And of course the *real* question is: in your film
>course where you saw INTOLERANCE, which tinted 35mm print did you see and which
>orchestra accompanied it live?

There's been an awful lot of 16mm bashing on here lately. True, there
were a lot of bad prints of silent (and other P.D. titles) in the '60s
and '70s, but an original 16mm print can still look beautiful, up to a
fairly decent size -- probably as large as many original silent
theaters, And, of course, 16mm provides screening opportunitites that
wouldn't exist without it (like the whole Syracuse festival that you
play at).

I appreciate the difference between 16mm & 35mm (though I have seen
underlit home 35mm theaters that looked no better than video). It just
seems that a lot of posters on this newgroup (actually not usually
you, Jon) are very snobbish in their posts about film gauges. The post
where someone bragged about his original print of SUNRISE took the
cake for this trend, though if it was in fact not true then it was a
brilliant parody of 35mm snobbery. I'm glad I've seen all of the 16mm
and even 8mm dupe prints of silents that I've watched over the years,
rather than waiting for a pristine 35mm screening to come along (with
an orchestra yet...get serious!). The tone of these posts resmbles the
tone of posts worrying about the current perspective on Griffith, and
smacks of a politically correct way to view films.

Obviously it is easier to appreciate older films when seeing them
under optimum conditions and as close as to the original presentation
as possible. But I would suggest that if someone seriously studying
film couldn't imagine the perspective of original audiences a little,
then he is not going to be a very good student of film.

Of course, Jon, if you want to throw away your 16mm collection you
know where to reach me.

- Jay Schwartz

Jay Schwartz

unread,
Apr 18, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/18/98
to

chan...@aol.com (ChaneyFan) wrote:

>Zeek: Is it just me, or do you guys think TITANIC (1997) is a crashing bore?
>I mean, they say that film had matured by the late 20th century, but I just
>can't believe this thing won an Oscar

Hell, I don't have to wait until 2080 to make that observation! I
mean, I thought it was ok, but it didn't affect me nearly as much as
INTOLERANCE (and I do not only like silent or even old films).

ChaneyFan

unread,
Apr 19, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/19/98
to

>>>There's been an awful lot of 16mm bashing on here lately

Obviously, you are preaching to the choir! Nevertheless, my point was that
there are films that simply cannot be properly seen in 16mm. I would no sooner
evaluate GONE WITH THE WIND in 16mm than I would evaluate SUNRISE from the
Critics Choice video.

Sure, CONDUCTER 1492, THE SHOCK PUNCH, and maybe even a moody piece like
STUDENT OF PRAGUE look good in 16mm. In fact, most silent films look quite
good on a modest size screen in 16mm if the film is good. But there are some
silent films that simply cannot be judged in anything less than 35mm on a huge
screen. There aren't a lot, but I would include INTOLERANCE, NAPOLEAN, BIRTH
OF A NATION, METROPOLIS, and a handful of others on this list. Also, there are
films that you *think* you can judge, but don't realize you are wrong until you
see them in 35mm. Case in point is FLESH AND THE DEVIL (which I own, but
rarely watch). In 16mm I thought it was a pretty good film, but the first time
I saw it in 35mm it was like having and out-of-body experience!

My point (and the subsequent parody I posted) was that it appears that the
fellow bashing INTOLERANCE was judging it from the Kino video or, at best, from
the Murray Glass 16mm print, not from the restored 35mm print with a live
orchestra. After he has seen it properly then I will be happy to seriously
consider his opinion.

>>>Of course, Jon, if you want to throw away your 16mm collection you know
where to reach me.

Very amusing Jay! But in fact, there are some films that I simply won't own in
16mm (e.g., NAPOLEAN) because I would never look at it. This means that I will
probably only see NAPOLEAN once every 20 years, but that's OK. At least I know
that I will see it properly.

Bruce Long

unread,
Apr 19, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/19/98
to

jmar...@hotmail.com wrote:
>DW's films are bad. It is no use insisting that they are great when very few
>people can sit through Intolerance without feeling as if they are having root
>canal done.

I still consider Intolerance to be the greatest film ever made,
though I might not feel that way if I had not seen it first in
a theater. It does lose something on the small TV screen.

Bruce Long

Feuillade

unread,
Apr 20, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/20/98
to

br...@asu.edu writes:

> I still consider Intolerance to be the greatest film
> ever made, though I might not feel that way if I had
> not seen it first in a theater. It does lose something
> on the small TV screen.
>
>Bruce Long

I've always found it overwhelming no matter where I saw it -- and I agree that
it's the greatest film ever made.


Tom Moran

http://members.aol.com/Feuillade/TomMoran.index.html

Silent Film Starter Kit: http://members.aol.com/Feuillade/TomMoran10.index.html

George Shelps

unread,
Apr 20, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/20/98
to

I also agree that "Intolerance" is the greatest film ever made....though
I thought the Radio City Music Hall
presentation of "Napoleon" challenged
that standing.

My original experience of "Intolerance" was at a screening I arranged
when I was in high school. We rented the 16mm MOMA print and the
accompanying piano score. Craig Sheppard, a classmate who became an
internationally-known concert
pianist, pounded out the score.

And the response was overwhelming from kids who probably had never seen
a silent film theatrically, much less backed by live music. And this
was in 1965.

Such is Griffith's power.




David P. Hayes

unread,
Apr 20, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/20/98
to

Christopher Jacobs wrote in message <3537EE...@badlands.nodak.edu>...

>Chris Dashiell wrote:
>> Show me another director who was *moving* the camera like
>> Griffith was in the teens.
>
>There weren't many, but there were a few. SECOND IN COMMAND (1915)
>directed by William J. Bowman and photographed by William Alder, has
>almost non-stop tracking and dolly shots, so much so that it can be
>distracting--...(Even THE

>GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY mounted the camera on a moving train for one shot in
>1903 and also panned and tilted to follow the actors.)

My understanding is that movie audiences of the first decade and a half of
this century did not like moving perspective in the movies they saw.
Audiences are said to have likened the effect to sea-sickness.

German audiences of the 1920s didn't have this quelm, and when their films
and filmmakers came over here, American observers saw the value in the
moving camera.

--
David Hayes

To respond privately, excise the first underscore from address.

Moviephile

unread,
Apr 21, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/21/98
to

>My understanding is that movie audiences of the first decade and a half
>of<BR>
>this century did not like moving perspective in the movies they saw.<BR>

>Audiences are said to have likened the effect to sea-sickness.<

That is why many theaters had a clock so close to the screen....that gives a
queasy person something to focus on that's stationary. Less clean up time in
the aisles that way.

D.W. Atkinson

http://members.aol.com/Cinesation

RickH23703

unread,
Apr 21, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/21/98
to

David P. Hayes writes:

>My understanding is that movie audiences of the first decade and a half of

>this century did not like moving perspective in the movies they saw.

>Audiences are said to have likened the effect to sea-sickness.

I have read the decision was more on the side of the producers who thought they
needed to mimic the experience of seeing actors on the theatrical stage: thus,
in addition to not moving the camera, they went for long shots where you could
see the "entire actor" so the audience wouldn't feel "cheated" at not seeing
all they paid for!

Rick Hoover
Lakeland FL

tom...@hotmail.com

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Apr 21, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/21/98
to

In the documentary "DW Griffith: Father of film" Griffith is said to have
found a moving camera too confusing in his early days and only tried it a few
times.
In the book "From Caligari to Hitler" which is a psychological study of the
German film, the widespread use of the moving camera by the Germans is
convincingly argued to be due to the lack of stability in German society along
with the strong influence of Freud's philosophy. Hollywood loved this
camerawork (they ended up hiring most of the cameramen at UFA studios) but
never understood why it fascinated them so much and when to use it properly.
This is a great book and essential reading for anyone interested interested in
the German silents. I think the author is Sigfried Krakauer.
A moving camera changes the viewpoint of the audience, as does any shot.
Griffith rarely found any use for such a profoundly subjective and
destabilizing viewpoint as the moving camera, except when filming moving
objects (men on horseback, trains, etc.). He was a victorian living in a
morally black and white universe. The Germans were fascinated by Freud and
were open to the possibility that we were living in a meaningless, cruel
universe where the lines of morality were blurred and fluid. A camera without
any stable point of view mirrored this outlook perfectly.
tom7tom

In article <199804211115...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,

David P. Hayes

unread,
Apr 21, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/21/98
to

RickH23703 wrote in message
<199804211115...@ladder01.news.aol.com>...

>David P. Hayes writes:
>>My understanding is that movie audiences of the first decade and a half of
>>this century did not like moving perspective in the movies they saw.
>>Audiences are said to have likened the effect to sea-sickness.
>
>I have read the decision was more on the side of the producers who thought
they
>needed to mimic the experience of seeing actors on the theatrical stage:
thus,
>in addition to not moving the camera, they went for long shots where you
could
>see the "entire actor" so the audience wouldn't feel "cheated" at not
seeing
>all they paid for!

That was true during the first of those years under question, but in the
last several years of those I included, close-ups and medium shots were
commonplace, and there were numerous instances instances of shots made of
inside moving vehicles wherein the actors in the foreground remained in
place while the background whizzed by behind them. What was not done much
immediately after it was first tried were moving-camera shots where the
ENTIRETY of what was being photographed changed position on the screen.

Fantomas

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Apr 21, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/21/98
to

In article <01bd69cb$cb3b9880$831ec5a9@elizabeth>, cd...@azstarnet.com
says...

>
>
> Show me another director who was *moving* the camera like
>Griffith was in the teens. Hell, in the early 20s other Hollywood
>films were still not moving the camera. See Alan Dwan's ROBIN
>HOOD for example (a good movie) - not a single moving shot in
>the film.
> The oddity of Griffith was that he combined a great sense of
>technical and stylistic innovation with a very old-fashioned, Victorian
>sensibility. It's one of the great ironies of cinema history that THE
>BIRTH OF A NATION, the film that brought movies to another level
>in style, was reactionary in content.
> There's been a little bit of a backlash against Griffith as innovator
>lately. But as good as directors like Tourneur or DeMille could be,
>they just didn't have the impact on the *craft* of filmmaking that
>Griffith did. The man practically invented the art of film editing.
>
>Dashiell
>
Not only that - but Griffith was also the mentor for a generation of
filmmakers who all but created Hollywood as we knew it. The protegees
of Griffith continued to shape American filmmaking until 1960 or so -
hence the term " classical cinema " to illustrate the style of old Hollywood,
which was invented by Griffith. From the prestigious work of John Ford -
Griffith's heir more than anyone else - to the Poverty Row work of William
Beaudine, Griffith's heirs defined the spectrum of Hollywood long into the
sound era. Griffith invented the vocabulary of the cinema. Eisenstein
theorised what Griffith actually did. True, Birth of a Nation is politically
indefensible in its racism, yet its power is still all too apparent eighty
years later.The fact that Griffith was not the only great director early on,
that De Mille, Feuillade, Gance, Ince, and William S. Hart were simultaneous
peers of the master does not diminish his work.


Jay Schwartz

unread,
Apr 24, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/24/98
to

Bruce Long <br...@asu.edu> wrote:
>I still consider Intolerance to be the greatest film ever made,
>though I might not feel that way if I had not seen it first in
>a theater. It does lose something on the small TV screen.

That's where I first saw it and I was amazed by it still. I was
already curious, however, from the few seconds of it I had seen in the
$2.00 Blackhawk sampler reel, on my parents' standard 8mm "Brownie"
projector.

tom...@hotmail.com

unread,
Apr 25, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/25/98
to

Because of the many strong responses to my criticism of DW and Intolerance, I
am viewing it once more on my Kino release.
Will someone please tell me what they see about this film that is great?
This is what I see:
Most of the women in this film are twittering harebrained children, flitting
around senselessly.
Everything is painted in clear moral lines of black and white. The evil Miss
Jenkins, the "dear one", etc. This is childish.
The scenes on human intimacy are manipulatively sentimental.
The crosscutting is often totally gratutitous and does nothing to enhance the
film. Stories are switched back and forth with little rhyme or reason.
The title cards are so loaded with judgment and prior explanation of what
follows that the film is superfluous. Isn't it a basic tenet of film that one
SHOWS not TELLS?
The use of four stories seems more a decision based on a decision that "bigger
is better" rather than any sensible understanding of what works in film. The
four stories are only related because of DW's adolescent philosophy of social
morality (one that he doesn't mind violating if the price is right [as in
Birth of a nation]).
The ending, with help coming from heaven, is absurd. This is almost as bad as
it would be if DW told us at the end that "it was all a dream" and it would be
just as unsatisfying.
If you are a fan of this film, please tell me what it is about it that you
find "great" because I would be interested in hearing about it. As it is, I
see this film as a a bloated, overrated mess which was rightfully the
financial and artistic ruin of Griffith.
tom7tom


In article <fj001.888$D13.7...@news3.voicenet.com>,

Feuillade

unread,
Apr 25, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/25/98
to

tom...@hotmail.com writes:

Let me tell you a story:

A few years ago, a student told I believe John Updike that she "just couldn't
get into" Tolstoy's "War and Peace."

"That's not Tolstoy's problem," was Updike's response.

And I would submit that, if you are unresponsive to what many people consider
to be the greatest film ever made, the fault lies with you, and not with
Griffith. It's not Griffith's problem.

There are people who think that "Anna Karenina" is boring, "David Copperfield"
overly sentimental, and "Crime and Punishment" melodramatic. But this is not
Tolstoy's or Dickens' or Dostoevsky's problem. It's the fault of the reader
whose sensibility isn't evolved enough to know greatness when it's staring them
in the face.

It is easy, and the province of adolescents, to say, "Well, everyone thinks
this is so great, but *I* know better, and it's a bloated, overrated, piece of
crap!"

It's also an easy way to get attention.

I don't feel the need to defend "Intolerance." It is what it is -- probably the
greatest single achievement in the history of film.

Anyone who desires to do so, be my guest.

But if you'd like to tell us what your idea of a great film is ("Caddyshack"
perhaps?) we miught be in a better position to gauge your reliability as an
arbiter of a given film's quality.


Tom Moran

http://members.aol.com/Feuillade/TomMoran.index.html

Essential Silents: http://members.aol.com/Feuillade/TomMoran10.index.html

FilmGene

unread,
Apr 25, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/25/98
to

Tom is making a basic error in his criticism of "Intolerance". He is viewing it
from a 1998 perspective, rather than trying to understand the film in the
context of its own time. It is rather like objecting to Shakespeare because the
vocabulary is different from something you would hear on Fox TV.

To complain about "sentimentality" and "black-and-white characterizations" in a
1916 film, made less than 20 years after the invention of the medium is to
betray an ignorance of popular culture at the beginning of this century. It is
probably not possible to put yourself completely into the shoes of a 1916
person, but some attempt must me made to find out as much as you can, perhaps
by reading some literature of the period, seeing a selection of films, etc.

If the response is that Tom is watching the film in 1998, not 1916, then
perhaps he is simply in the wrong field. Historical truth requires some work
and some research -- not just watching the film at the wrong speed on a 19"
screen.

Tom would perhaps be happier watching contemporary films (no crime there) than
trying to make sense of what is essentially a "foreign language" with little
preparation for the job.


Gene Stavis, School of Visual Arts - NYC

MooveeLovr

unread,
Apr 25, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/25/98
to

Tom Moran wrote:
>
>A few years ago, a student told I believe John Updike that she "just couldn't
>get into" Tolstoy's "War and Peace."
>
>"That's not Tolstoy's problem," was Updike's response.
>
>And I would submit that, if you are unresponsive to what many people consider
>to be the greatest film ever made, the fault lies with you, and not with
>Griffith. It's not Griffith's problem.
>
>There are people who think that "Anna Karenina" is boring, "David
>Copperfield"
>overly sentimental, and "Crime and Punishment" melodramatic. But this is not
>Tolstoy's or Dickens' or Dostoevsky's problem. It's the fault of the reader
>whose sensibility isn't evolved enough to know greatness when it's staring
>them
>in the face.
>
>It is easy, and the province of adolescents, to say, "Well, everyone thinks
>this is so great, but *I* know better, and it's a bloated, overrated, piece
>of
>crap!"

Tom, I do have agree with you to an extent. However, when shown a piece of art
that some would consider a master work of art, lets say the figurine of Jesus
immersed in the the artist own urine, I think perhaps I would question the
evolution of the artists sensibilities, not my own!

I do think Intolerance is a wonderful film for many things but I do agree with
tom that the woman look silly in it as they do in many other films of that era.
Other than that, not bad, not bad at all.

tom...@hotmail.com

unread,
Apr 25, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/25/98
to

I will answer some of the responses to this thread here.

I am a lover of silent film. I have over one hundred of them on video. I am
not some kid who thinks "Caddyshack" is a great film. I am 42 years old and
have been watching silent movies since I was nine years old. I bought Rudi
Blesch's biography of Keaton when I was in my teens. I was a Harry Langdon fan
back in the 1970's. I have a copy of the nine hour script for Stroheim's
"Greed" in my posession. I will ignore the ad hominem attacks. My background
as a silent movie fan goes back decades.
I have been asked to volunteer what films I consider great in order to make
some kind of judgment as to my taste. Let me restrict myself to the silent era
and give a list of films that I think are excellent. No Griffith films are on
the list.
In no particular order:

Pandora's Box
Safety Last
Greed
The Strong Man
The Wind
The General
The Crowd

As far as Updike's comment goes - I go with Epicurus on this one: "I spit on
what others call beautiful if it gives me no pleasure." While I enjoy Updike,
I won't let him or any other New Yorker literary type dictate to me what I
should and should not like. Gore Vidal (who loves film) once mocked this
pompous belief that the public is too dense and uneducated to know what is
good and what isn't: "Sure, the audience loved it-but what do they know?"

I wish I could get my friend Jim involved in this. He has a collection of
films that dwarfs my own and his opinion of Griffith is harsher than mine.
Unfortunately, he is just getting into computers.

tom7tom

In article <199804251712...@ladder03.news.aol.com>,

Christopher Bird

unread,
Apr 25, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/25/98
to

On Sat, 25 Apr 1998 tom...@hotmail.com wrote:

> Because of the many strong responses to my criticism of DW and Intolerance, I
> am viewing it once more on my Kino release.
> Will someone please tell me what they see about this film that is great?
> This is what I see:
> Most of the women in this film are twittering harebrained children, flitting
> around senselessly.
> Everything is painted in clear moral lines of black and white. The evil Miss
> Jenkins, the "dear one", etc. This is childish.

A convention of the time. No doubt many contemporary conventions (like
WHY put THE END at the end of a film) will seem equally absurd to future
generations.

> The scenes on human intimacy are manipulatively sentimental.
> The crosscutting is often totally gratutitous and does nothing to enhance the
> film. Stories are switched back and forth with little rhyme or reason.

I disagree. The more I see the film (the Brownlow restoration with the
Carl Davis soundtrack, just for the record), the more I am impressed at
the links between the stories. It's actually very clever, though on my
first viewings I was less impressed.

> The title cards are so loaded with judgment and prior explanation of what
> follows that the film is superfluous. Isn't it a basic tenet of film that one
> SHOWS not TELLS?

Yes it is, but I don't think that that many titles in the film fall into
this trap. And only a few years earlier this trend even covered the main
titles of a film (e.g. RESCUED FROM AN EAGLE'S NEST).

> The use of four stories seems more a decision based on a decision that "bigger
> is better" rather than any sensible understanding of what works in film. The
> four stories are only related because of DW's adolescent philosophy of social
> morality (one that he doesn't mind violating if the price is right [as in
> Birth of a nation]).

It was a cinematic experiment. How many people have adopted the
intellectual montage Eisenstein uses in OCTOBER, or the constant long
takes of ROPE? But these were immensely important experiments in film
style. And, actually, INTOLERANCE was the cornerstone of the Soviet
montage school of filmmaking.

I agree with you that the more preachy aspects of the film are annoying,
however.

> The ending, with help coming from heaven, is absurd. This is almost as bad as
> it would be if DW told us at the end that "it was all a dream" and it would be
> just as unsatisfying.

It depends how deeply into the film you are. I'll admit it - I've actually
been in tears at this point, the film has moved me so much.

> If you are a fan of this film, please tell me what it is about it that you
> find "great" because I would be interested in hearing about it. As it is, I
> see this film as a a bloated, overrated mess which was rightfully the
> financial and artistic ruin of Griffith.

> tom7tom

The film is great because it is one of the most immensely powerful films
ever made (and I haven't even seen it on 16mm, let alone 35 with an
orchestra), and because it was a very daring and influential experiment
in technique. I always hate analysing a film in such cold terms - it's the
emotional response you get when it's running that matters. And I get one
hell of an emotional response from this (and BIRTH for the matter).

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Christopher Bird St Anne's College
President Oxford OX2 6HS
Oxford University Film Foundation tel. 01865 511451
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------


Chris Dashiell

unread,
Apr 25, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/25/98
to

Sentimentality and heavy-handedness were
definitely part of the Griffith sensibility, and also
indicative of the time. I feel one must take it in
perspective in order to appreciate Griffith's
innovations in technique and style.
INTOLERANCE has a narrative imbalance
(the St. Bartholomew Massacre and Christ
stories are underdeveloped) and the theme is
tenuous. The cross-cutting is something that
had never been done before on this scale, and
I think the way it accelerates as the movie
progresses is very exciting.
If you can't stomach the melodramatic style
of acting, you probably won't be able to sit
through a majority of silent dramas, particularly
from the period before the Great War. I would
suggest reading Brownlow's chapter on it from
_The Parade's Gone By..._ to get some perspec-
tive.
I also firmly believe that INTOLERANCE needs
to be seen on a big screen in order to be fully
appreciated. (Perhaps you did, I don't know -
it's just a point I need to make.)
Of course you are entitled to not like Griffith
or INTOLERANCE. I would also like to point out
the differences between enjoying a film as one
enjoys one's favorites, and being able to appreciate
a film for its historical (i.e. stylistic) importance,
in the context of film as a progressive development.
For example, I find Eisenstein's OCTOBER to be
almost oppressively controlling in its attitude to the
audience's response. It's not a favorite in the sense
of a film that I would think of popping in the VCR on
a rainy evening when I'm blue, but on the other hand
I can appreciate its dynamism and its importance in
the development of a certain technique, as well as its
influence on later film. I feel that this is even more
pertinent in the case of Griffith. How many people
outside of the Klu Klux Klan would name THE BIRTH
OF A NATON as a *favorite * film? But a serious film
student should be able to understand why it is a
tremendously important film.
Having said that, I will add that I enjoy INTOLERANCE
on a level beyond historical appreciation. Making
allowances for Griffith's tendency to melodrama and
Victorian moralizing, I still get off on the zest of the
Babylonian story, the relentless rhythm of the modern
story, and the overall feel of the picture. In the end, I
guess it's a matter of what "floats your boat."

Dashiell


Christopher Bird

unread,
Apr 26, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/26/98
to

On 25 Apr 1998, Chris Dashiell wrote:

> How many people
> outside of the Klu Klux Klan would name THE BIRTH
> OF A NATON as a *favorite * film?

Me. If you know of a more powerful film than this, I'd dearly love to hear
its name. I think you can divorce the enjoyment of a film's dramatic
content from its ideological content.

ChaneyFan

unread,
Apr 26, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/26/98
to

>>>The title cards are so loaded with judgment and prior explanation of what
follows that the film is superfluous. Isn't it a basic tenet of film that one
SHOWS not TELLS?

IMO, this is one of the few serious flaws that Griffith had in nearly all of
his films. It actually got worse when he got into features...perhaps when he
only had 13 min to tell a story in a Biograph he removed superfluous titles. I
have never understood how a director with such a marvelous visual style had to
telegraph the scene that we were about to see, by explaining it all in a title.
One wonders when Griffith was caught at MOMA re-editing his features, if he
wasn't cutting out the titles!

Having said that, I'll check in with my own INTOLERANCE observations. I don't
agree with tom7tom that it's a lousy film. But I certainly don't agree with
Tom Moran that it is the greatest film ever made, and challenge his statement
that "many people consider it the greatest film ever made." No they don't.
Take a poll. More than 1% and I'll be amazed. I think the Babylonian story is
truly epic...a masterpiece of set design and cinematography. Really
impressive. And the modern story is as good as anything else anyone did in the
teens. But the other two stories? Throw them out and you have a better film.

I will add the caveat that I have only seen this in 16mm with some crummy
orchestral score (and I think I might have played it once on piano). This is
no way to see a film of this stature. I haven't seen it now in about 20 years
because I am waiting to see it again in 35mm with live orchestra. (Same is
true for BIRTH OF A NATION...does *anyone* run this anywhere in 35mm with
orchestra??) Perhaps then I'll reconsider it as one of the greats. But I do
know that you can't possibly judge the merits of a film like this from a video
tape.

And Christopher Bird said, "If you know of a more powerful film than this, I'd
dearly love to hear its name. " Powerful? In what way? In the ability to
manipulate an audience, I would put THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, SLEUTH,
FAIL-SAFE, and DEATH WISH ahead of it. For sheer emotional impact, SUNRISE,
THE MAN WHO LAUGHS, THE BIG PARADE, FOUR SONS, HELL'S HEROES, SCHINDLER'S LIST,
and TESTAMENT are way ahead. For epic grandeur, GONE WITH THE WIND, BEN HUR
(either '25 or '59), LES MISERABLES (1927), and (dare I even say it) TITANIC
are ahead of it. Yes it is epic. Yes it is powerful in audience manipulation
(only in the modern story though). But the greatest? No way.

Oh yeah...someone else mentioned ROPE and cited it as an important film. I
hope you aren't putting ROPE in the same class as INTOLERANCE, because, unlike
ROPE, INTOLERANCE is a *good* film.

Feuillade

unread,
Apr 26, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/26/98
to

moove...@aol.com writes:

> Tom, I do have agree with you to an extent.
> However, when shown a piece of art that some
> would consider a master work of art, lets say the
> figurine of Jesus immersed in the the artist own
> urine, I think perhaps I would question the
> evolution of the artists sensibilities, not my own!

The trouble with this argument is that I think you would be hard put to find
anyone who considers "Piss Christ" a masterpiece.

dsu...@concentric.net

unread,
Apr 26, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/26/98
to

In article <199804260351...@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
chan...@aol.com (ChaneyFan) wrote:

> One wonders when Griffith was caught at MOMA re-editing his features, if he
> wasn't cutting out the titles!

I doubt it. He was more likely adding MORE. :-)
>
> ...the modern story is as good as anything else anyone did in the


> teens. But the other two stories? Throw them out and you have a better film.

100% agreement.
>
> ...I do


> know that you can't possibly judge the merits of a film like this from a video
> tape.

Uh, oh. There you go again. Maybe YOU can't judge the merits this way, but
obviously others can (and do). Of course, it would be superior as a
projected image, but these things are relative.


>
> And Christopher Bird said, "If you know of a more powerful film than this, I'd

> dearly love to hear its name...."

I'd agree with this if the word "powerful" was replaced by "ambitious".

Doug

Christopher Bird

unread,
Apr 26, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/26/98
to

On 26 Apr 1998, ChaneyFan wrote:

> And Christopher Bird said, "If you know of a more powerful film than this, I'd

> dearly love to hear its name. " Powerful? In what way? In the ability to
> manipulate an audience, I would put THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, SLEUTH,
> FAIL-SAFE, and DEATH WISH ahead of it. For sheer emotional impact, SUNRISE,
> THE MAN WHO LAUGHS, THE BIG PARADE, FOUR SONS, HELL'S HEROES, SCHINDLER'S LIST,
> and TESTAMENT are way ahead. For epic grandeur, GONE WITH THE WIND, BEN HUR
> (either '25 or '59), LES MISERABLES (1927), and (dare I even say it) TITANIC
> are ahead of it. Yes it is epic. Yes it is powerful in audience manipulation
> (only in the modern story though). But the greatest? No way.

I find the intercutting of the climaxes very exciting - I've seen the film
loads of times, and I'm still genuinely on the edge of my seat when the
car is racing the train. Evidently our tastes are very different, for I
don't find films like SUNRISE and SCHINDLER'S LIST nearly as powerful. And
I wouldn't say that the epic grandeur of some of the films you mention
eclipse INTOLERANCE. Clearly most people would agree with you, however - I
know very few people who like the film at all.

We could if you like get into a very detailed discussion of the audience
manipulation, but for now I'll just say that I find the cutting to another
story just as one is getting exciting very effective. And it's a
well-established dramatic principle. Eisnestein cuts away to close-ups of
different parts of the ship just as the sailors are about to be executed
in POTEMKIN - this heightens the suspense in just the same way.

> Oh yeah...someone else mentioned ROPE and cited it as an important film. I
> hope you aren't putting ROPE in the same class as INTOLERANCE, because, unlike
> ROPE, INTOLERANCE is a *good* film.

It was me . . . no, I wouldn't for a moment put ROPE in the same class. I
merely cited it as an important experiment in technique - in my opinion
unsuccessful.

At the end of the day it's pointless arguing about whether or not a film
is good. I like it, and some don't, and no amount of arguing over details
on either side is going to convince anyone that it is/isn't an exciting
film.

JimNeibaur

unread,
Apr 26, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/26/98
to

A little over a year ago I posted the statement that I actually found
Intolerance to be entertaining. It created a long, heated thread in which both
sides were heard. This film seems to inspire as much debate as the rather
controversial Birth of a Nation.

The first time I saw Intolerance was in a college film course. Many of the
students were bored, but I was fascainted. I have found it even more
entertaining upon repeated viewings. I have the same affection for Tillie's
Punctured Romance, which is also pretty well dismissed by most silent film
fans.

Jim

David Pierce

unread,
Apr 26, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/26/98
to ChaneyFan

ChaneyFan wrote:
>
> IMO, this is one of the few serious flaws that Griffith had in nearly all of
> his films. It actually got worse when he got into features...perhaps when he
> only had 13 min to tell a story in a Biograph he removed superfluous titles. I
> have never understood how a director with such a marvelous visual style had to
> telegraph the scene that we were about to see, by explaining it all in a title.

One reason for the fewer titles in the
Biographs is that many survive only
in original negative without titles.
Many of the prints with titles were
prepared in the Biograph style, and
are not authentic. I believe that the
paper prints have titles, and, of course,
there are some surviving release prints
with original inter-titles to guide
restorations from the original negatives.

I was fortunate earlier this month to
visit the Museum of Modern Art Film
Preservation Center in Hamlin, Pennsylvania,
in the Pocono Mountains. They have posted
some pictures of the facility at:

http://www.moma.org/filmpres/index.html

Rather than name rooms or vaults after the
people who donated money, they use the titles
of various Biograph films.

The 90 minute tour included an overview
of the design goals, storage racks, humidity,
temperature, security and sprinkler systems,
etc. In the nitrate building (a short walk from
the safety vaults), the vault manager
opened a vault containing Biograph negatives.

Pulling a can at random, we saw the film
was in pristine condition. He carefully unspooled
a few feet for us. The image was razor sharp,
with the single perforation in each frame
extending into the image area.

I have been told that the film stock that
Biograph used was not traditional nitrate,
and except for one year (1913?), the negatives
have proven as stable as safety film.

The Museum is now preserving additional Biographs
from these negatives using funds provided
by the Lillian Gish estate. I saw one from
1903 or so at the AMIA conference in November,
and it was gorgeous, with an added blue tint
in places- but lacking inter-titles!

David Pierce

Silent Film Sources
http://www.cinemaweb.com/silentfilm
Updates and news the first of every month
http://www.cinemaweb.com/silentfilm/monthly.htm

The Silent Film Bookshelf
http://www.cinemaweb.com/silentfilm/bookshelf

Tag Gallagher

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Apr 26, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/26/98
to

How many are familiar with Griffith's separate release of Intolerance's
modern story as THE MOTHER AND THE LAW? How many would agree with me
that it's one of Griffith's best features, and, moreover, is free of the
various complaints (merited or not) that have been made hereabouts
concerning Griffith?

In my own experience, the obstacle in Intolerance is its intercutting
among the various stories. Whatever the intellectualistic appeal (which
one might even qualify abysmally as "postmodern") of this device, the
result for me is to weaken the interest of each of the stories. A
postmodernist might praise such "distancing," but what Griffith subverts
is the emotional energies of his own melodrama, the soul of his art.

Which we can experience in THE MOTHER AND THE LAW. While I would dare
to criticize THE BIRTH OF A NATION as statically shot and edited, and
INTOLERANCE as intellectualistically shot and edited, here we have a
real Movie -- in which Griffith's penchant for paralleling events is
much more emotionally focused (Mae Marsh's plight in context of wider
social problems).

If THE MOTHER AND THE LAW had a score as good as SUNRISE'S or CITY
LIGHTS', it would probably be more generally ranked on their level.

FilmGene

unread,
Apr 27, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/27/98
to

<<One reason for the fewer titles in the
Biographs is that many survive only
in original negative without titles.>>

I hesitate to argue with David, but I have always understood that the Biographs
had a minimum of titles, largely becuase the primary audience for films at the
time were people who did not understand English or were poorly educated.

I know for a fact that "The Battle at Elderbridge Gulch" is distributed in a
version from the twenties which adds significant verbiage to the titles,
changing some of the plot points in the process.

As films matured, they spread to more middle-class, educated audiences and the
directors began to become more "pretentious" (as Griffith certainly did) in the
use of titles. Wise-cracking began to be added to titles in the twenties as
titling became a distinct profession.

I am especially fond of the eloquent title (one of the film's few) from "A
Corner in Wheat": "Drowned in a torrent of golden grain". I have always thought
of the Biographs as deliberately eschewing long titles.

ChaneyFan

unread,
Apr 27, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/27/98
to

>>>At the end of the day it's pointless arguing about whether or not a film is
good. I like it, and some don't, and no amount of arguing over details on
either side is going to convince anyone that it is/isn't an exciting film.

Agreed! And my comments are not intended to be negative. Although I wouldn't
call INTOLERANCE one of my favorites (well, not even one of my 100 favorites),
I have great respect for it. As someone else said, it is one of the most
ambitious films ever made. I think I clearly fall somewhere in between Tom
Moran (it's the greatest) and tom7tom (it's dog excrement).

Christopher Jacobs

unread,
Apr 27, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/27/98
to

JimNeibaur wrote:
>
> The first time I saw Intolerance was in a college film course. Many of the
> students were bored, but I was fascainted. I have found it even more
> entertaining upon repeated viewings. I have the same affection for Tillie's
> Punctured Romance, which is also pretty well dismissed by most silent film
> fans.
>
-------------

When I first saw TILLIE'S PUNCTURED ROMANCE in college I found it barely
a curiosity for Chaplin's early appearance, crude and quite dull
overall. Now, after seeing maybe a couple hundred pre-1920 features, I
enjoy TILLIE very much and actually find Chaplin one of the least
interesting aspects of it. For its date it is very ambitions and quite
well made. What may have turned me off originally was the fact that I
simply was neither familiar with nor interested in the historical era of
1914, preferring the late 1920s and 1930s at the time. A majority of
silents require not only familiarity with but some appreciation for the
styles of the time they were created before they can be viewed with any
objectivity.

Christopher Jacobs

MooveeLovr

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Apr 27, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/27/98
to

>Tom Moran wrote:
>The trouble with this argument is that I think you would be hard put to find
>anyone who considers "Piss Christ" a masterpiece.
>
>
Tom, I remember a lot of the trendy artsy-fartsy who thought this was indeed a
masterpiece. This is the only artist I would question the evolution of the
artists sensibilities, but that's what makes the world go round. What you
consider a piece of art, I might throw away as junk. It's called taste and
opinions. We all don't have the same ones, thank God or the world would be a
dull place.


Feuillade

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Apr 27, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/27/98
to

moove...@aol.com writes:

>> Tom Moran wrote:

>> The trouble with this argument is that I think you
>> would be hard put to find anyone who considers
>> "Piss Christ" a masterpiece.

> Tom, I remember a lot of the trendy artsy-fartsy who
> thought this was indeed a masterpiece.

This evidence is a tad anecdotal for me.

> This is the only artist I would question the evolution
> of the artists sensibilities, but that's what makes the world
> go round. What you consider a piece of art, I might throw
> away as junk. It's called taste and opinions. We all don't
> have the same ones, thank God or the world would be a
> dull place.

Nevertheless, there is such a thing as a consensus of taste.

Find me a respected literary critic who thinks "Hamlet" is a piece of crap, an
art critic who thinks "View of Delft" is garbage, or a music critic who finds
the Jupiter Symphony to be a crock of shit, and I might think you're on to
something.

Otherwise, I'll have to assume that you're just manifesting a gooey critical
relativism, that doesn't tell us much.

Christopher Bird

unread,
Apr 27, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/27/98
to

On Sun, 26 Apr 1998, Tag Gallagher wrote:

> How many are familiar with Griffith's separate release of Intolerance's
> modern story as THE MOTHER AND THE LAW? How many would agree with me
> that it's one of Griffith's best features, and, moreover, is free of the
> various complaints (merited or not) that have been made hereabouts
> concerning Griffith?

(You'll have to excuse my ignorance - I've only seen a cut-down of FALL OF
BABYLON from the 1919 rereleases.)

Surely for DWG to reissue these as separate features defeats the original
point of INTOLERANCE, which wasn't to tell four stories, but to tell ONE
story of intoleranmce through the ages. To show the stories separately
must have been an admission that his original idea had failed (or, I know,
to make some money).

Johnny Yen

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Apr 27, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/27/98
to

In article <01bd7099$a3706040$2f1fc5a9@elizabeth>, cd...@azstarnet.com
says...

>
>
> Sentimentality and heavy-handedness were
>definitely part of the Griffith sensibility, and also
>indicative of the time. I feel one must take it in
>perspective in order to appreciate Griffith's
>innovations in technique and style.
> INTOLERANCE has a narrative imbalance
>(the St. Bartholomew Massacre and Christ
>stories are underdeveloped)

In fact I hate to be in the position of telling Griffith posthumously
what he should have done - as its all too reminiscent of how Jerry
Lewis told Hitchcock how he would have directed Psycho - but it would
have been better if there merely had been a cut to a shot of Christ
on the cross to make a parallel rather than making this a full fledged
story. I think its agreed upon this is the worst part of Intolerance.

and the theme is
>tenuous. The cross-cutting is something that
>had never been done before on this scale, and
>I think the way it accelerates as the movie
>progresses is very exciting.
> If you can't stomach the melodramatic style
>of acting, you probably won't be able to sit
>through a majority of silent dramas, particularly
>from the period before the Great War. I would
>suggest reading Brownlow's chapter on it from
>_The Parade's Gone By..._ to get some perspec-
>tive.


Also compare the acting in Intolerance to the acting in Cabiria and by
comparison Griffith's actors will seem far more restrained and less
melodramatic ! Esp. given that Cabiria was the inspiration for The Fall
of Babylon, it is remarkable how much better the acting is and how much
more alive Griffith's film feels.



> I also firmly believe that INTOLERANCE needs
>to be seen on a big screen in order to be fully
>appreciated. (Perhaps you did, I don't know -
>it's just a point I need to make.)
> Of course you are entitled to not like Griffith
>or INTOLERANCE. I would also like to point out
>the differences between enjoying a film as one
>enjoys one's favorites, and being able to appreciate
>a film for its historical (i.e. stylistic) importance,
>in the context of film as a progressive development.
>For example, I find Eisenstein's OCTOBER to be
>almost oppressively controlling in its attitude to the
>audience's response. It's not a favorite in the sense
>of a film that I would think of popping in the VCR on
>a rainy evening when I'm blue, but on the other hand
>I can appreciate its dynamism and its importance in
>the development of a certain technique, as well as its
>influence on later film.

I feel this way about much of Eisenstein's work. Strike is probably his
most enjoyable film.

I feel that this is even more

>pertinent in the case of Griffith. How many people

>outside of the Klu Klux Klan would name THE BIRTH

>OF A NATON as a *favorite * film? But a serious film
>student should be able to understand why it is a
>tremendously important film.
> Having said that, I will add that I enjoy INTOLERANCE
>on a level beyond historical appreciation. Making
>allowances for Griffith's tendency to melodrama and
>Victorian moralizing, I still get off on the zest of the
>Babylonian story, the relentless rhythm of the modern
>story, and the overall feel of the picture. In the end, I
>guess it's a matter of what "floats your boat."
>
>Dashiell
>

Very true. Intolerance is pretty amazing considering when it was made. It
continued to influence Hollywood well into the sound era - in fact the
" Hollywood style ", so called classical cinema, was very much a creation
of Griffith although one could cite what Feuillade and Gance were doing at
the same time, and what Thomas Ince and William S.Hart were doing at the same
time as well - as Hart's films of the mid-teens look better today than any
other dramatic films of the day other than those of Griffith
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>


Christopher Jacobs

unread,
Apr 27, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/27/98
to

Christopher Bird wrote:
>
> .... Griffith's separate release of Intolerance's

> > modern story as THE MOTHER AND THE LAW?

> Surely for DWG to reissue these as separate features defeats the original


> point of INTOLERANCE, which wasn't to tell four stories, but to tell ONE
> story of intoleranmce through the ages. To show the stories separately
> must have been an admission that his original idea had failed (or, I know,
> to make some money).
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Actually, Griffith started shooting THE MOTHER AND THE LAW as a separate
film in 1914, and expanded it into INTOLERANCE after the overwhelming
reaction to THE BIRTH OF A NATION early in 1915. When the length of the
pre-release INTOLERANCE became too unwieldy, all four sections were
shortened drastically before it finally came out in 1916. It's possible
that planned scenes which would have strengthened the French and
Biblical stories were never even filmed.

So THE MOTHER AND THE LAW (finally released in August of 1919) can stand
very well on its own with no apologies, and is actually better than what
appears in INTOLERANCE. It puts back scenes that had been cut out, and
likely includes new scenes shot for the separate release.

Christopher Jacobs
http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/cjacobs

tom...@hotmail.com

unread,
Apr 27, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/27/98
to

Re: the artsy fartsy types who think "Piss Christ" is a masterpiece: I met one
of these people. I asked him if he would feel the same if the art in question
was not a crucifix submerged in urine, but a star of David. "Oh, no!!" he
said, "that would be awful!"
Exactly.

In article <199804271340...@ladder03.news.aol.com>,

Tag Gallagher

unread,
Apr 27, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/27/98
to

How many are familiar with Griffith's separate release of Intolerance's
modern story as THE MOTHER AND THE LAW? How many would agree with me
that it's one of Griffith's best features, and, moreover, is free of the
various complaints (merited or not) that have been made hereabouts
concerning Griffith?

In my own experience, the obstacle in Intolerance is its intercutting

Eric Grayson

unread,
Apr 27, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/27/98
to

>Agreed! And my comments are not intended to be negative. Although I
wouldn't
>call INTOLERANCE one of my favorites (well, not even one of my 100
favorites),
>I have great respect for it. As someone else said, it is one of the most
>ambitious films ever made. I think I clearly fall somewhere in between
Tom
>Moran (it's the greatest) and tom7tom (it's dog excrement).

That's a great sentiment and a good way of expressing it. So many people
have diverging opinions. I like Tod Browning's work and many think he's
the worst director ever.

Just to show the extremes... I have actually found someone who thinks that
El Brendel is funny! Almost everyone I know thinks that El Brendel is
almost as funny as heart surgery. This guy is now actively trying to find
El's features and shorts (which go cheap).

He thinks Just Imagine is a really great movie. I guess it takes all
kinds.

Eric

FilmGene

unread,
Apr 28, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/28/98
to

<<I asked him if he would feel the same if the art in question
was not a crucifix submerged in urine, but a star of David. "Oh, no!!" he
said, "that would be awful!"
Exactly.>>

Exactly what?

Jews are hypocrites?
Artsy-fartsy types are Jews?

Tom7, your standing in this debate has just sunk below sea level.

Alan and Lisa

unread,
Apr 28, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/28/98
to

In <6i33kp$b1u$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com> tom...@hotmail.com writes:
>
>Re: the artsy fartsy types who think "Piss Christ" is a masterpiece: I
met one
>of these people. I asked him if he would feel the same if the art in

question
>was not a crucifix submerged in urine, but a star of David. "Oh, no!!"
he
>said, "that would be awful!"
>Exactly.

And this has *what* to do with D.W. Griffith?

Lisa

Feuillade

unread,
Apr 28, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/28/98
to

film...@aol.com writes:

But first he quotes someone else:

>> I asked him if he would feel the same if the art in
>> question was not a crucifix submerged in urine, but
>> a star of David. "Oh, no!!" he said, "that would be awful!"
>> Exactly.
>

> Exactly what?
>
> Jews are hypocrites?
> Artsy-fartsy types are Jews?
>
> Tom7, your standing in this debate has just sunk
> below sea level.

I thought it sunk below sea-level with his first post on Griffith.

ChaneyFan

unread,
Apr 28, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/28/98
to

In the interest of dragging this thread on ad infinitum, here are a number of
other films made in the same period as INTOLERANCE (pre-1918) that I consider
to be quite fine pieces of filmmaking. Many good films were being done by
Fairbanks, Pickford, Hart, DeMille and others. Nothing with the scope, budget
(or financial loss) of INTOLERANCE, but it's not as if this era was a wasteland
with INTOLERANCE being the only oasis of art.

Down to Earth (1916)
Return of Draw Egan, The (1915)
Cheat, The (1915)
American Aristocracy (1916)
Regeneration, The (1915)
Flirting With Fate (1916)
Matrimaniac, The (1916)
Reggie Mixes In (1916)
Square-Deal Man, The (1917)
Narrow Trail, The (1917)
Stella Marris (1917)
Disciple, The (1915)
Hell's Hinges (1916)
Wild and Woolly (1916)
Reaching for the Moon (1917)
Man from Painted Post, The (1917)
Silent Man, The (1917)
Poor Little Rich Girl (1917)
Manhattan Madness (1916)
Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914)
Young Romance (1914)
Girl's Folly, A (1917)
Tale of Two Cities, A (1917)
Golden Chance, The (1916)
Girl Without a Soul, The (1917)
White Raven, The (1917)
Alias Jimmy Valentine (1915)
Gretchen the Greenhorn (1916)
Where Are My Children? (1916)
L'Enfant de Paris (1913)
Judex (1917)
Straight Shooting (1917)
Little Angel, The (1914)
Dora Brandes (1916)
Snow White (1916)

Constance Kuriyama

unread,
Apr 28, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/28/98
to

Feuillade (feui...@aol.com) writes:
> moove...@aol.com writes:

<snip>



>> What you consider a piece of art, I might throw
>> away as junk. It's called taste and opinions. We all don't
>> have the same ones, thank God or the world would be a
>> dull place.
>
> Nevertheless, there is such a thing as a consensus of taste.
>
> Find me a respected literary critic who thinks "Hamlet" is a piece of crap, an
> art critic who thinks "View of Delft" is garbage, or a music critic who finds
> the Jupiter Symphony to be a crock of shit, and I might think you're on to
> something.

Just a couple of points in passing.

Point one: Consensus of taste is never complete, and it is more likely
to exist for long-established classics than for recent works.
Even then, not all critics will agree on the relative merits
of Shakespeare's works, or of Shakespeare's comedies relative to
Jonson's comedies, etc.

Point two: All films and film criticism are recent.

It appears to me that a number of posters agree with at least some of
Tom's criticism, and so do I. Intolerance is an interesting film, but
only some parts of it are great--IMO.

Connie K.

Constance Kuriyama

unread,
Apr 28, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/28/98
to

Tag Gallagher (t...@sprynet.com) writes:

> If THE MOTHER AND THE LAW had a score as good as SUNRISE'S or CITY
> LIGHTS', it would probably be more generally ranked on their level.

Since I've only seen the parts of it that are included in
_Intolerance_, my opinion of it has to be tentative, but its
mode is realistic and melodramatic (particularly in the attenuated
suspense at the end) rather than mythical. I don't think it would
ever attain the same degree of subtlety and symbolic richness as these
two great films--even with a better score.

Connie K.

tom...@hotmail.com

unread,
Apr 28, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/28/98
to

Exactly-meaning that "Piss Christ" was not masterpiece but a vulgar piece of
blasphemy.
tom7tom

In article <199804280129...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,


film...@aol.com (FilmGene) wrote:
>
> <<I asked him if he would feel the same if the art in question
> was not a crucifix submerged in urine, but a star of David. "Oh, no!!" he
> said, "that would be awful!"
> Exactly.>>
>
> Exactly what?
>
> Jews are hypocrites?
> Artsy-fartsy types are Jews?
>
> Tom7, your standing in this debate has just sunk below sea level.
>

> Gene Stavis, School of Visual Arts - NYC
>

tom...@hotmail.com

unread,
Apr 28, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/28/98
to

I see that the lack of inflection and all suprasegmentals has again caused an
email
misunderstanding.
When I asked the admirer of "Piss Christ" what he would think of that work if
it was a star
of David rather than a crucifix which was submerged in urine, he replied that
it would be
"awful" -meaning, a vulgar piece of blasphemy. I replied, "exactly" because he
finally saw
why so many people were offended by that piece.

JimNeibaur

unread,
Apr 28, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/28/98
to

Eric stated:

Just to show the extremes... I have actually found someone who thinks that
El Brendel is funny! Almost everyone I know thinks that El Brendel is
almost as funny as heart surgery. This guy is now actively trying to find
El's features and shorts (which go cheap).

-------

Tony Slide did a decent article on Brendel in FILMFAX a year or two ago. But I
personally never found Brendel very funny at all. At least not as funny as Joe
Penner (!)

Jim

JimNeibaur

unread,
Apr 28, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/28/98
to

I like Intolerance more than I do any of Griffith's other features, with
Broken Blossoms a close second. I actually find Intolerance entertaining, and
have long wondered why so many silent film enthusiasts are so turned off by it.

I don't understand the Piss Christ analogy at all. From my perspective, those
who are bored by Intolerance are closer to those bored by Shakespeare. There
are folks who will objectively admit the Bard is great, but don't find it
terribly entertaining. Matter of taste.

Piss Christ was a bold, outrageous artistic statement that was pretty much
made to piss people off. Intolerance was (I thought) Griffith experimenting
with the film medium in an attempt to reach past its (then) current
limitations. His idea to tell a series of stories and then, through editing,
show how they compare over time, and also maintain the whole thing into some
sort of feasible narrative was a pretty radical idea at the time, but not one
which exhibited the sort of outrageous attitude as Piss Christ.

Jim

Bruce Long

unread,
Apr 28, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/28/98
to

I certainly agree with the analysis of Intolerance written
by Edward Wagenknecht in "The Films of D. W. Griffith,"
pp. 85-88, and would recommend that you read it if you
really want to know why this film is so great. In particular,
"...leaving the hero and the heroine no longer merely this man
and this woman but Humanity, the helpless Little Man, who, in
every age, asks only to be allowed to enjoy his simple life
in peace, and whose happiness is forever being wrecked by
the exploiters who break in upon him..."

For me, the cross-cutting across history is what makes
this film so great and lifts it so high, creating the
feeling that this is not just individual stories being
watched, but the entire history of mankind flowing
before you.

Bruce Long

Tag Gallagher

unread,
Apr 28, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/28/98
to

Pray tell, what is "the mythical mode" and how may it be detected?
This conundrum aside, you may be right about the relative merits of the
three movies, but I'm not sure that we look for subtlety in any of these
three: with Chaplin, it's his clarity, his force, his emotional
precision; ditto Murnau. In both Chaplin and Murnau, rather than
subtlety its the strength and purity of the emotions: the little details
could scarcely be less obscure. (Isn't there some adage about great art
never be subtle?) Nor do I look for symbols here. I think Croce's
point applies precisely to these movies: poetry does not have symbols,
because a symbol stands for something other than itself, whereas poetry
stands for itself.

So too the ends of SUNRISE and CITY LIGHTS. What do they "symbolize"?
Rather, they ARE. (I'm not even willing to grant that SUNRISE's sunrise
-- at the end -- represents any actual sunrise.)

My own feeling is that Murnau, not Griffith, invented the Hollywood
movie (even though I don't think there's any such entity) because almost
everything changes with SUNRISE, and the Hollywood movie is full of mood
and atmosphere of a sort that is virtually absent from Griffith until
THE SORROWS OF SATAN, that is, until after Murnau. Similarly, CITY
LIGHTS is much more involved with atmospheric mood than prior Chaplins.
And in both movies the music supports these emotions -- which don't
really have equivalents in teens Griffith (you couldn't use the same
type of music with the Griffith films).

That said, I think Mae Marsh's travails in the courtroom traverse many
more gamuts of precise emotions within a single sequence than you're
likely to find in the entirely-more-focused movies of Chaplin or
Murnau. I honestly don't have the foggiest idea what "mythic" might
mean for you, but I expect you have a real treat in store for you when
the great day comes and you finally see THE MOTHER AND THE LAW!

David P. Hayes

unread,
Apr 28, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/28/98
to

ChaneyFan wrote in message
<199804260351...@ladder03.news.aol.com>...
>>>>The title cards are so loaded with judgment and prior explanation of
what
>follows that the film is superfluous. Isn't it a basic tenet of film that
one
>SHOWS not TELLS?

>
>IMO, this is one of the few serious flaws that Griffith had in nearly all
of
>his films. It actually got worse when he got into features...perhaps when
he
>only had 13 min to tell a story in a Biograph he removed superfluous
titles. I
>have never understood how a director with such a marvelous visual style had
to
>telegraph the scene that we were about to see, by explaining it all in a
title.

Griffith may have been following a trend in literature. As much as there is
admiration for Jules Verne for his marvelous literary style in depicting
futuristic invention and breathless use of contemporary technology, his
novels ("Around the World in 80 Days" I know for sure) begin each chapter
with a summary of what will occur before the next chapter begins.

Griffith is known to have used Charles Dickens's work as a model. Did
Dickens provide chapter summaries as part of his text?

--
David Hayes

To respond privately, excise the first underscore from address. (If your
news reader does not allow you to edit an email address within the send
fields, my address consists of my old email address's userID [david_p_hayes]
minus the first underscore, followed by: atsign earthlink dot net.)

David P. Hayes

unread,
Apr 28, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/28/98
to

dsu...@concentric.net wrote in message ...
>In article <199804260351...@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
>chan...@aol.com (ChaneyFan) wrote:
>> One wonders when Griffith was caught at MOMA re-editing his features, if
he
>> wasn't cutting out the titles!
>
>I doubt it. He was more likely adding MORE. :-)

Miles Kreuger -- director of the Institute of the American Musical -- has
often told the story of being present when Griffith was caught with scissors
beside a print of "Intolerance" that MOMA was to show that evening.
Griffith was protesting of a shot with Mae Marsh that "it was too long in
1916 and it is too long now!"

Nonetheless, Griffith DID cut titles from "Intolerance" in the years after
the film's initial release. The Film Preservation Associates laserdisc
edition reproduces as a supplement frames of the 1916 release version which
had been deposited with LOC for copyright purposes, and they offer a
contrast to the editing of the most authoritative version extant. As I
recall, there were ELEVEN titles at the beginning of the film, excluding
credits, prior to the first moving image. In the reissue, these had been
pruned to SIX. These titles were (and are) numerous because Griffith saw
fit to tell us about the format of the film that would follow (the intercut
story) and the purpose of that format (to illustrate a theme common to all
eras). Griffith also wanted to disclaim that the agents of the charity
organization depicted in the film should not be construed as representative
of all such organizations "which are doing good work for the betterment of
society" (or words to that effect); as I recall, this latter was among the
material cut when the number of titles was reduced.

Other deletions of titles occurred during the movie. Oddly enough, the
reissue does have a title not in the original (naturally): one telling us
that this version of the film contains all scenes from the original. (The
Babylon battle scene is certainly shorter -- to its benefit, in my
opinion -- but cuts seem to occur within scenes, not of scenes in their
entirety.)

>I doubt it. He was more likely adding MORE. :-)

It may seem amusing to think that he would do this, but cutting seems to
have been Griffith's preference when preparing reissue editions. There was
an interesting addition to "The Mother and the Law" when it was released as
a standalone story apart from "Intolerance": Griffith presented for the
first time a scene removed from the original release of "Intolerance" a
scene wherein Mae Marsh sees through the orphanage that her baby has died.
In "Intolerance," not only doesn't the baby die, but it is returned to herr
at the end of the movie (a scene that naturally is excluded from "The Mother
and the Law" in order to facilitate the baby's death). This footage is
included as a supplement on the FPA laserdisc.

FilmGene

unread,
Apr 28, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/28/98
to

<<When I asked the admirer of "Piss Christ" what he would think of that work if
it was a star
of David rather than a crucifix which was submerged in urine, he replied that
it would be
"awful" -meaning, a vulgar piece of blasphemy. I replied, "exactly" because he
finally saw
why so many people were offended by that piece.

tom7tom>>

Your attempt to "clairfy" what you wrote has muddied the water even further.
Why a Star of David? Why not a statue of Buddha or an Islamic symbol. Just what
are you trying to say?

Constance Kuriyama

unread,
Apr 28, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/28/98
to

Tag Gallagher (t...@sprynet.com) writes:
> Constance Kuriyama wrote:
>>
>> Tag Gallagher (t...@sprynet.com) writes:
>>
>> > If THE MOTHER AND THE LAW had a score as good as SUNRISE'S or CITY
>> > LIGHTS', it would probably be more generally ranked on their level.
>>
>> Since I've only seen the parts of it that are included in
>> _Intolerance_, my opinion of it has to be tentative, but its
>> mode is realistic and melodramatic (particularly in the attenuated
>> suspense at the end) rather than mythical. I don't think it would
>> ever attain the same degree of subtlety and symbolic richness as these
>> two great films--even with a better score.
>
> Pray tell, what is "the mythical mode" and how may it be detected?

The mythical mode is, quite simply, meaning expressed through myths.

For the meaning of myth, consult your dictionary.

There's quite a bit of Chaplin criticism on the mythical properties of
his character and his films. Pardon me for assuming you knew something
about it.

> This conundrum aside

It's hardly a conundrum. Do you always patronize people you respond to,
or am I a special case?

, you may be right about the relative merits of the
> three movies, but I'm not sure that we look for subtlety in any of these
> three: with Chaplin, it's his clarity, his force, his emotional
> precision; ditto Murnau.

Maybe you don't look for subtlety, but if you think there's none in Chaplin,
or that it isn't important, maybe you should look at his films again.

In both Chaplin and Murnau, rather than
> subtlety its the strength and purity of the emotions: the little details
> could scarcely be less obscure.

Subtlety and obscurity are not synonyms.

But along with strength and purity there is also fine nuance, both in
Chaplin and in Murnau. I'm not thinking only of acting. There is
some excellent subtle acting (and subtlety of detail) in Griffith.
The meaning is never very subtle, though.

(Isn't there some adage about great art
> never be subtle?) Nor do I look for symbols here. I think Croce's
> point applies precisely to these movies: poetry does not have symbols,
> because a symbol stands for something other than itself, whereas poetry
> stands for itself.

I'm sure most poets--especially symbolist poets--would be astonished to
learn that they weren't using symbols.

So the little Tramp, or the City Woman in Sunrise, stand only for themselves?
Not likely, is it?

The conflict in George O'Brien's character in _Sunrise_ is not merely between
two women but between two sets of values. The mode of the film is far more
surrealistic and symbolic than realistic.

> So too the ends of SUNRISE and CITY LIGHTS. What do they "symbolize"?
> Rather, they ARE. (I'm not even willing to grant that SUNRISE's sunrise
> -- at the end -- represents any actual sunrise.)

The end of _City Lights_ does not symbolize anything, but it employs
symbols--notably the flower. The meaning of a sunrise (new beginnings)
is quite conventional. I don't think it improves the film to pretend that the
image is just a pretty picture which has no meaning beyond itself.

<snip>

> Similarly, CITY
> LIGHTS is much more involved with atmospheric mood than prior Chaplins.

I think both _The Kid_ and _The Gold Rush_ create moods quite self-consciously,
but I agree that the music certainly enhances the effect in _City Lights_.

> And in both movies the music supports these emotions -- which don't
> really have equivalents in teens Griffith (you couldn't use the same
> type of music with the Griffith films).
>
> That said, I think Mae Marsh's travails in the courtroom traverse many
> more gamuts of precise emotions within a single sequence than you're
> likely to find in the entirely-more-focused movies of Chaplin or
> Murnau. I honestly don't have the foggiest idea what "mythic" might
> mean for you, but I expect you have a real treat in store for you when
> the great day comes and you finally see THE MOTHER AND THE LAW!

I've run out of time, but I will certainly see _Mother and the Law_ when
the opportunity arises. I rather prefer the Babylonian story as it
stands in _Intolerance_, but that might change if I see all of the
modern story.

Connie K.

ChaneyFan

unread,
Apr 29, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/29/98
to

Eric said:
>>>Just to show the extremes... I have actually found someone who thinks that
El Brendel is funny! Almost everyone I know thinks that El Brendel is almost as
funny as heart surgery. This guy is now actively trying to find El's features
and shorts (which go cheap).

This person needs professional help!

Christopher Jacobs

unread,
Apr 29, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/29/98
to

Eric Grayson wrote:
>
> Just to show the extremes... I have actually found someone who thinks that
> El Brendel is funny! Almost everyone I know thinks that El Brendel is
> almost as funny as heart surgery. This guy is now actively trying to find
> El's features and shorts (which go cheap).
>
> He thinks Just Imagine is a really great movie. I guess it takes all
> kinds.
>
-----------------------

I can take only so much of El Brendel, but I like JUST IMAGINE. Don't
forget Maureen O'Sullivan is in it. It's got a fairly nice score, too.
And cool Flash Gordon rocketships. And it's not as weird as AELITA QUEEN
OF MARS.

Chris Jacobs

Jay Fenton

unread,
Apr 29, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/29/98
to JimNeibaur
    El Brendel isn't really very funny in most of his shorts, but as a character actor in some of the early sound features, he's pretty good.   Watch Sunny Side Up (1929) and see if you don't think he has a few good lines.   But, alas, a steady diet of El Brendel would  turn you into El Dumbbell.

Jay F.

JimNeibaur wrote:

Eric stated:

Just to show the extremes... I have actually found someone who thinks that
El Brendel is funny! Almost everyone I know thinks that El Brendel is
almost as funny as heart surgery.  This guy is now actively trying to find
El's features and shorts (which go cheap).

tom...@hotmail.com

unread,
Apr 30, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/30/98
to

You seem to be the only one who still doesn't (or pretends not to) understand.
As I have no wish to continue to attempt to explain the sense of a simple
anecdote to you, I guess the meaning of it must forever remain a mystery to
you.
tom7tom

In article <199804282204...@ladder01.news.aol.com>#1/1,

Fantomas

unread,
Apr 30, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/30/98
to

In article <3545F5...@sprynet.com>, t...@sprynet.com says...

>
>Constance Kuriyama wrote:
>>
>> Tag Gallagher (t...@sprynet.com) writes:
>>
>> > If THE MOTHER AND THE LAW had a score as good as SUNRISE'S or CITY
>> > LIGHTS', it would probably be more generally ranked on their level.
>>
>> Since I've only seen the parts of it that are included in
>> _Intolerance_, my opinion of it has to be tentative, but its
>> mode is realistic and melodramatic (particularly in the attenuated
>> suspense at the end) rather than mythical. I don't think it would
>> ever attain the same degree of subtlety and symbolic richness as these
>> two great films--even with a better score.
>
>Pray tell, what is "the mythical mode" and how may it be detected?
>This conundrum aside, you may be right about the relative merits of the

>three movies, but I'm not sure that we look for subtlety in any of these
>three: with Chaplin, it's his clarity, his force, his emotional
>precision; ditto Murnau. In both Chaplin and Murnau, rather than

>subtlety its the strength and purity of the emotions: the little details
>could scarcely be less obscure. (Isn't there some adage about great art

>never be subtle?) Nor do I look for symbols here. I think Croce's
>point applies precisely to these movies: poetry does not have symbols,
>because a symbol stands for something other than itself, whereas poetry
>stands for itself.
>
>So too the ends of SUNRISE and CITY LIGHTS. What do they "symbolize"?
>Rather, they ARE. (I'm not even willing to grant that SUNRISE's sunrise
>-- at the end -- represents any actual sunrise.)
>
>My own feeling is that Murnau, not Griffith, invented the Hollywood
>movie (even though I don't think there's any such entity) because almost
>everything changes with SUNRISE,

I don't know about that. Lets say a B western of the 1930s or a Republic
serial of the 1940s could be traced to Intolerance much easier than they
could to Sunrise ! I will give Murnau more importance than Eisenstein though
FWIW.

and the Hollywood movie is full of mood
>and atmosphere of a sort that is virtually absent from Griffith until

>THE SORROWS OF SATAN, that is, until after Murnau. Similarly, CITY


>LIGHTS is much more involved with atmospheric mood than prior Chaplins.

I take it you never saw Easy Street ?

Fantomas

unread,
Apr 30, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/30/98
to

In article <6i33kp$b1u$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, tom...@hotmail.com says...

>
>Re: the artsy fartsy types who think "Piss Christ" is a masterpiece:


Does anyone think this ? I don't even think that Serrano thinks this. I think
it was meant as an exercise in degradation and decadence, although by titling
it with that particular name it becomes shock value for the sake of shock
value. If it had some other name it might be worthwhile, but with that name
it becomes merely shock for shock's sake and by being shocked we give Serrano
exactly what he wants. If no one gave him attention he would not feel the
need to do something like this.

I met one
>of these people. I asked him if he would feel the same if the art in

question
>was not a crucifix submerged in urine, but a star of David. "Oh, no!!" he
>said, "that would be awful!"

Blasphemy in the eye of the beholder no doubt.

>Exactly.
>
>In article <199804271340...@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
> feui...@aol.com (Feuillade) wrote:
>>
>> moove...@aol.com writes:
>>
>> >> Tom Moran wrote:
>>
>> >> The trouble with this argument is that I think you
>> >> would be hard put to find anyone who considers
>> >> "Piss Christ" a masterpiece.
>>
>> > Tom, I remember a lot of the trendy artsy-fartsy who
>> > thought this was indeed a masterpiece.
>>
>> This evidence is a tad anecdotal for me.
>>
>> > This is the only artist I would question the evolution
>> > of the artists sensibilities, but that's what makes the world

>> > go round. What you consider a piece of art, I might throw


>> > away as junk. It's called taste and opinions. We all don't
>> > have the same ones, thank God or the world would be a
>> > dull place.
>>
>> Nevertheless, there is such a thing as a consensus of taste.
>>
>> Find me a respected literary critic who thinks "Hamlet" is a piece of
crap,


Henry Miller hated Shakespeare. Actually I do know a current critic who
thinks this - Richard Meltzer. In Shakespeare's time the elite tastemakers
considered him a popular artist and snobs like Sir Philip Sidney, THE
tastemaker critic of Elizabethan England, viewed Shakespeare as a
schlockmeister hack. Although TBF Sidney did not live to see Hamlet...

>an
>> art critic who thinks "View of Delft" is garbage, or a music critic who
>finds
>> the Jupiter Symphony to be a crock of shit, and I might think you're on to
>> something.
>>

>> Otherwise, I'll have to assume that you're just manifesting a gooey
critical
>> relativism, that doesn't tell us much.
>>

Fantomas

unread,
Apr 30, 1998, 3:00:00 AM4/30/98
to

In article <199804280424...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
chan...@aol.com says...

>
>In the interest of dragging this thread on ad infinitum, here are a
number of
>other films made in the same period as INTOLERANCE (pre-1918) that I
consider
>to be quite fine pieces of filmmaking. Many good films were being done
by
>Fairbanks, Pickford, Hart, DeMille and others. Nothing with the scope,
budget
>(or financial loss) of INTOLERANCE, but it's not as if this era was a
wasteland
>with INTOLERANCE being the only oasis of art.

Given the nature of my net name I would say that I understand this ! I
don't think too many people familiar with silents would say that
Griffith was all that there was worthwhile in the midteens. Hart and De
Mille certainly were making good films and Feuillade and Gance overseas.
Fairbanks was really just starting out at the time and was working in
films produced by Griffith. As for acting styles, preventing the
enjoyment of earlier silents, this is especially true with the Italian
spectacles of the teens.

>Down to Earth (1916)
>Return of Draw Egan, The (1915)
>Cheat, The (1915)
>American Aristocracy (1916)
>Regeneration, The (1915)
>Flirting With Fate (1916)
>Matrimaniac, The (1916)
>Reggie Mixes In (1916)
>Square-Deal Man, The (1917)
>Narrow Trail, The (1917)
>Stella Marris (1917)
>Disciple, The (1915)
>Hell's Hinges (1916)
>Wild and Woolly (1916)
>Reaching for the Moon (1917)
>Man from Painted Post, The (1917)
>Silent Man, The (1917)
>Poor Little Rich Girl (1917)
>Manhattan Madness (1916)
>Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914)

I'd disagree on this one ! Its more historically significant than
actually enjoyable. If MGM had never made its Wizard of Oz than this
film would be forgotten as a mere curiosity, in the category of writers
producing films based on their own work - such as the film that Jack
London ( by far a more important author than L.Frank Baum ) produced


>Young Romance (1914)
>Girl's Folly, A (1917)
>Tale of Two Cities, A (1917)
>Golden Chance, The (1916)
>Girl Without a Soul, The (1917)
>White Raven, The (1917)
>Alias Jimmy Valentine (1915)
>Gretchen the Greenhorn (1916)
>Where Are My Children? (1916)
>L'Enfant de Paris (1913)
>Judex (1917)
>Straight Shooting (1917)
>Little Angel, The (1914)
>Dora Brandes (1916)
>Snow White (1916)
>

Nick Langdon

unread,
May 3, 1998, 3:00:00 AM5/3/98
to

JimNeibaur wrote in message
<199804281142...@ladder01.news.aol.com>...


>Eric stated:
>
>Just to show the extremes... I have actually found someone who thinks that
>El Brendel is funny!


You have to admit, El is a boon to laundry everywhere, because that's what
you think of when you watch his movies...... :) SUNNY SIDE UP is
delightful despite his presence........

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