Country: USA
Year: 1916
Duration: 198'
Four separate episodes spanning two thousand years, to show how the seeds of intolerance have always taken root in the human soul. In ancient Babylonia, war breaks out between prince Belshazzar and Cyrus the Great, emperor of Persia; Belshazzar loses the war because of the rivalry between the followers of two Babylonian divinities, Bel-Marduk and Ishtar. Palestine is the setting of episodes from the Bible, from the punishment of the adulteress to the wedding in Cana, and the crucifixion of Jesus, killed by the fanaticism around him. In 16th-century France, the escalation of violence fomented by Catholic monarchs leads to the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572, when thousands of Calvinist Huguenots lost their lives. In America during the 1910s, a factory owner lowers the salary of his workers to contribute to the initiatives of an intransigent group of social reformers; this causes a strike which is repressed in blood and marks the beginning of the end for a young couple who lose their livelihood and turn to crime. [cg]
Biography
film director
D.W. Griffith
D.W. Griffith (LaGrange, KY, USA, 1875 - Hollywood, CA, USA, 1948) is considered one of the founding fathers of American film and the classic cinematographic language. His primary merit is for having adopted and codified a number of linguistic and technical innovations (such as point of view shots, axial cuts, dollies, pan shots, close-ups), for having theorized and popularized editing as a narrative instrument, and for having transformed feature film in the usual format. Some of the most important movies he directed (out of a total of five hundred) are Birth of a Nation (1914), an epic and controversial fresco about the Civil War and a box office success; Intolerance (1916), with which he tried to respond to critics of his previous film but was a financial failure; and the Dickensian parabola Broken Blossom (1919). He founded United Artists with Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, and in 1936 he received an honorary Oscar.
FILMOGRAFIA
Birth of a Nation (Nascita di una nazione, 1914), Intolerance (1916), A Romance of Happy Valley (Il romanzo della valle felice, 1919), Broken Blossom (Giglio infranto, 1919), Way Down East (Agonia sui ghiacci, 1920), Orphans of the Storm (Le due orfanelle, 1921), Dream Street (Amore d’altri tempi, 1921), One Exciting Night (Notte agitata, 1922), America (1924).
Cast
& Credits
regia, scenografia, produttore/director, production design, producer
D.W. Griffith
soggetto/story
dalla poesia/from the poem Out of the Craddle Endlessly Rocking di/by Walt Whitman
sceneggiatura/screenplay
D.W. Griffith, Hettie Grey Baker, Tod Browning, Anita Loos, Mary H. O’Connor, Frank E. Woods
fotografia/cinematography
G.W. Bitzer
montaggio/film editing
D.W. Griffith, James Smith, Rose Smith
costumi/costume design
D.W. Griffith, Clare West
musica/music
Joseph Carl Breil
interpreti/cast
Lilian Gish, Ralph Lewis, Mae Marsh, Robert Harron, Constance Talmadge, Josephine Crowell, Margery Wilson, Frank Bennet, Elmer Clifton, Miriam Cooper, Alfred Paget
produzione/production
Triangle Film Corporation, Wark Producing
contatti/contacts
MoMA
Katie Trainor
katie_trainor@moma.org
www.moma.org
D.W. Griffith
soggetto/story
dalla poesia/from the poem Out of the Craddle Endlessly Rocking di/by Walt Whitman
sceneggiatura/screenplay
D.W. Griffith, Hettie Grey Baker, Tod Browning, Anita Loos, Mary H. O’Connor, Frank E. Woods
fotografia/cinematography
G.W. Bitzer
montaggio/film editing
D.W. Griffith, James Smith, Rose Smith
costumi/costume design
D.W. Griffith, Clare West
musica/music
Joseph Carl Breil
interpreti/cast
Lilian Gish, Ralph Lewis, Mae Marsh, Robert Harron, Constance Talmadge, Josephine Crowell, Margery Wilson, Frank Bennet, Elmer Clifton, Miriam Cooper, Alfred Paget
produzione/production
Triangle Film Corporation, Wark Producing
contatti/contacts
MoMA
Katie Trainor
katie_trainor@moma.org
www.moma.org
