It's just a melodrama? Maybe, but one of the most epic ever conceived! This was the "Inception" of a hundred years ago, with its ambitious (and at the time, ground-breaking) weaving together of multiple storylines and having faith in the perspicacity of its audience to follow along. There are plenty of wonderful scenes, characters and moments throughout, but the final reel, with multiple fast and suspenseful chases/races against time is absolutely thrilling.
The spectacle of the sets (everyone justly praises the scenes in Babylon, but check out the size of Jenkins' offices in the modern story!) is overwhelming. The gore, violence, sexuality and nudity are all astonishing to someone who equates black and white movies with Hays Code restrictions. The use of the camera is powerful, with judicious and impressive tracking shots in and across the frame, massive excellent close-ups, and depth of composition hardly ever seen since.
The Christ story didn't need to be any longer, since the general audience was far more familiar with the gospels, and far more invested in them than audiences today. The majority of people in 1916 wouldn't have needed more than a few striking evocations, which is what they got. The St Bart's Massacre also was probably a much more familiar slice of history to audiences 100 years ago than it is today. Griffith understandably spends most time in the present day, and in exotic Babylon, about which much more had been just learnt in then-recent decades. The Mountain Girl is a fantastic character, no shrinking violet, no damsel in distress, but a perfectly convincing and compelling character who exemplifies the thesis that human nature is eternal across the ages. Her very sad and bleak ending is an effective tightening of the suspense for the end of the modern story, a dreadful dip on the emotional rollercoaster.
The very last few minutes may seem over the top today, but remember WWI was ongoing while this was made, the most awful war to that time, on an unprecedented scale and no guarantee of how it might end. The evocation of mechanised warfare in the Siege of Babylon (including a primitive "tank") is paid off with scenes (with tanks) set at the Western Front of 1916. A war-ending intervention from a heavenly choir may seem cliche or cheesy today, but I bet it would've been as emotionally releasing, satisfying, uplifting, moving and cathartic to a wide audience in 1916 as, say, the end of Titanic (Rose, now young again, returning to the ship and being reunited with Jack among the welcoming applause of all the ghostly passengers) was to a huge number of people in '97.
An absolute masterpiece. Not recommended for the MTV or Tik-Tok generation, though.
The spectacle of the sets (everyone justly praises the scenes in Babylon, but check out the size of Jenkins' offices in the modern story!) is overwhelming. The gore, violence, sexuality and nudity are all astonishing to someone who equates black and white movies with Hays Code restrictions. The use of the camera is powerful, with judicious and impressive tracking shots in and across the frame, massive excellent close-ups, and depth of composition hardly ever seen since.
The Christ story didn't need to be any longer, since the general audience was far more familiar with the gospels, and far more invested in them than audiences today. The majority of people in 1916 wouldn't have needed more than a few striking evocations, which is what they got. The St Bart's Massacre also was probably a much more familiar slice of history to audiences 100 years ago than it is today. Griffith understandably spends most time in the present day, and in exotic Babylon, about which much more had been just learnt in then-recent decades. The Mountain Girl is a fantastic character, no shrinking violet, no damsel in distress, but a perfectly convincing and compelling character who exemplifies the thesis that human nature is eternal across the ages. Her very sad and bleak ending is an effective tightening of the suspense for the end of the modern story, a dreadful dip on the emotional rollercoaster.
The very last few minutes may seem over the top today, but remember WWI was ongoing while this was made, the most awful war to that time, on an unprecedented scale and no guarantee of how it might end. The evocation of mechanised warfare in the Siege of Babylon (including a primitive "tank") is paid off with scenes (with tanks) set at the Western Front of 1916. A war-ending intervention from a heavenly choir may seem cliche or cheesy today, but I bet it would've been as emotionally releasing, satisfying, uplifting, moving and cathartic to a wide audience in 1916 as, say, the end of Titanic (Rose, now young again, returning to the ship and being reunited with Jack among the welcoming applause of all the ghostly passengers) was to a huge number of people in '97.
An absolute masterpiece. Not recommended for the MTV or Tik-Tok generation, though.