What to expect
Griffith attempts a form of parallel editing on an unprecedented scale, moving among Babylon, Judea, Renaissance France, and modern America until architecture, crowds, and gestures begin to rhyme across centuries.
How to ease in
Do not try to memorise every name. Identify each period by its visual world, then watch how the intervals shorten as the four crises approach their climaxes.
Heads-up
Four stories from different eras are intercut to argue that persecution repeats whenever moral certainty becomes a weapon.
The cuts keep asking me to compare events before I have finished absorbing any one of them. I admire the cinematic ambition while keeping the film’s moral blind spots firmly in view.
Open the note ↓
The cuts keep asking me to compare events before I have finished absorbing any one of them. I admire the cinematic ambition while keeping the film’s moral blind spots firmly in view.
— Momo
Credits & versions
- Cast
- Lillian Gish · Mae Marsh · Fred Turner
Version map
Where to go next
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