Though not to be understood as a receptive apology or contrite response for his stereotyping and racist portrayals of his previous spectacle that glamourised and revived America’s Klu Klux Klan—quite the opposite as the direct was fervent that he had nothing to be sorry for and that his critics were the intolerant ones, the silent film epic from D. W. Griffith subtitled variously either A Sun-Play of the Ages or Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages certainly undertook a grander focus, premiering on this day in 1916.
Though punctuated with several intermissions and interludes, the three-and-a-half-hour film consists of four stories separated by millennia and mores that trace how intolerance has informed human history and suffering through the ages. The first chapter, the “Babylonian story” depicts the fall of the civilisation due to a sectarian fight between followers of rival gods Ishtar and Marduk. The next recounts the Bible passages of the Wedding at Cana and The Woman Taken in Adultery and how religious and unneighbourly bigotry and small-mindedness led to the crucifixion of Jesus. The “Renaissance story” recounts the persecution of the Protestant Huguenots by royalist Catholics that led to the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. The final contemporary story set in America shows how petty crime, moral puritanism and capitalism conspire to keep the downtrodden marginalised. Transitions are marked by an image of the Eternal Mother rocking a cradle to represent the passing of generations.
