Monday, May 20, 2019

By the Gods!

 The massive set of Babylon from INTOLERANCE (1916)

The photo above is with extras and below is without them. In that image, you can see crew members working on the set, sweeping, etc. There are wires everywhere. This set pretty much dominated this part of the film but since everything was shot a a distance, it makes for an odd viewing: one can't connect any of the characters to it. I always find this puzzling. Since no actors are seen within the set, those scenes could have been easily re-used in other films. Considering the fact that it was made in 1910s, I should be more 'tolerant' of this approach but it's like viewing different movies set in Babylon within the movie itself. One can easily witness this problem in numerous PEPLUM movies, with so many productions freely re-using big scenes from other productions over and over again. IMO, to 'ground' such big scenes actors should be see within them.


2 comments:

Scott Ochiltree said...


Thanks, most interesting.

Griffith made INTOLERANCE in part as a response to the sharp criticism (at least north of the Mason-Dixon Line) of the overtly racist BIRTH OF A NATION.

The Babylonian sequence is the best of INTOLERANCE's four sub-movies in my view.

Anonymous said...

That still is just an amazing set.