MOVIE REVIEWS : ‘INTOLERANCE’ STILL DAZZLING

If it’s possible for a film to achieve greatness without becoming a masterpiece, then the evidence is surely D. W. Griffith’s 1916 “Intolerance.” It will be shown tonight only at 8 at the County Museum of Art as part of the “50 Years of Film From the Museum of Modern Art” tribute; it will be accompanied by the original score, performed by organist Robert Israel.

In the wake of both the success and controversy over “The Birth of a Nation,” Griffith was at once eager to top himself and to assert his right to express his view of history in answer to the widespread criticism of his landmark Civil War epic as a racist work. Far from being an apology for “The Birth of a Nation,” “Intolerance,” which remains among the handful of the screen’s most dazzling spectacles, is a call for the toleration of differing attitudes, values and beliefs, culminating in a plea for global peace and harmony at the very moment that Europe was engulfed in World War I.

“Intolerance” began modestly as “The Mother and the Law,” a melodrama based on an actual incident: A factory owner, goaded by his homely, puritanical spinster sister, backs her Moral Majority-type movement by cutting his employees’ wages, driving them to strike and eventually leave for the city, where they fall prey to its evils.

Deciding that this wasn’t ambitious enough to follow “The Birth of a Nation,” Griffith expanded his theme to cross-cut between his modern story and three others: the Calvary, the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of the Huguenots in 16th-Century France and the fall of Babylon. They would be linked by repeated shots of Lillian Gish endlessly rocking a cradle, suggesting an eternal cycle of life. Each story focuses on one or more couples and the cross-cutting intensifies as the three period pieces proceed to their brutal and tragic climaxes.

“Intolerance” has always had a tough time involving audiences, and still does: No sooner do you start getting caught up in one story than it cuts away to another. However, Griffith’s profoundly passionate, intuitive grasp of the cinematic carries the day, sweeping away all that was heavily didactic and sentimental, contrived, crude and even vague. In a Griffith film there is always the dynamic, electrifying sense of an artist struggling to express himself.