(Love's Struggle throughout the Ages)
Country: US
Technical: bw 163m
Director: D. W. Griffith
Cast: Mae Marsh, Lillian Gish, Constance Talmadge
Synopsis:
The story of mankind's intolerance and persecution is told through four stories across the centuries, in ancient Babylon, New Testament Judaea, Catholic and Huguenot Paris and modern America.
Review:
Griffith's folie de grandeur, which essentially ruined him in his bid to match the success of The Birth of a Nation, is his most artistically ambitious undertaking, and possibly his most critically successful. A sort of film fugue, it allows him to refine the cross-cutting techniques to which he more or less gave his name. Dramatically, it is a mixed affair, by turns laughable, daring, charming, erotic and awe-inspiring (the Babylonian sets were for a long time the largest ever built). Unfortunately the epilogue is absurdly optimistic, made necessary by the sermonising of what has gone before.
(Love's Struggle throughout the Ages)
Country: US
Technical: bw 163m
Director: D. W. Griffith
Cast: Mae Marsh, Lillian Gish, Constance Talmadge
Synopsis:
The story of mankind's intolerance and persecution is told through four stories across the centuries, in ancient Babylon, New Testament Judaea, Catholic and Huguenot Paris and modern America.
Review:
Griffith's folie de grandeur, which essentially ruined him in his bid to match the success of The Birth of a Nation, is his most artistically ambitious undertaking, and possibly his most critically successful. A sort of film fugue, it allows him to refine the cross-cutting techniques to which he more or less gave his name. Dramatically, it is a mixed affair, by turns laughable, daring, charming, erotic and awe-inspiring (the Babylonian sets were for a long time the largest ever built). Unfortunately the epilogue is absurdly optimistic, made necessary by the sermonising of what has gone before.
