Griffith created this film three years after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. It is apparent that he is expressing his antipathy towards that Revolution through this film. He does this explicitly by anachronistically calling the evil revolutionaries in the film "Bolsheviks". His characterization of Danton and Robespierre may perhaps be taken to be references to Lenin and Trotsky.
The film certainly takes a clear, if ambiguous, political stance. It supports the peasants and workers of France against the aristocracy for the first hour and a half. Suddenly, as the revolution begins, the movie switches and paints the same peasants and workers in hysterical and savage tones in the last hour. This was the feeling of the ruling oligarchs in America at the time, the Czar and the aristocracy were terrible people in Russia, but the communists were worse.
One interesting theme is that class does not matter and that people are good or bad regardless of what class they may belong to. This was a direct attack against the socialist ideal and practice of class-based parties.
As far as being a story teller, Griffith is flamboyant and exuberant. He throws in fabulous sets, costumes, make-up, acting and dazzling shots. The editing is dynamic. As with many of Spielberg's movie, great cinematic technique overcomes a lackluster story ("Close Encounters of the Third Kind," for example)
One can see some interesting psychological processes in Griffith from the movie. Notice that both Gish sisters are the objects of near rape in the film. Griffith has both the aristocracy and the revolutionists engaging in grand orgies. On one level we/Griffith are supposed to associate this type of hedonist behavior with anarchy, chaos and evil. On the other hand, these scenes contain some extraordinary beautiful and memorable shots. The line dances in the garden of the aristocracy and the swirling, mad dance of the revolutionaries through Parisian streets are quite extraordinary. Did Bergman get his ending for "The Seventh Seal" from this movie?
I also noticed that the film contains about three seconds of female nudity with the right breast of a woman in a fountain of wine clearly exposed. Shocking! I believe the film was made the same year that D.H. Lawrence released "Women in Love."
I also think it is interesting that both this movie and Chaplin's "City Lights" have a plot that turns on a young blind woman. It seems to be that the silent filmmakers may have thought of their lack of speech as a sort of handicap and thus the blind beautiful woman is a kind of metaphor for silent movies themselves.
The film certainly takes a clear, if ambiguous, political stance. It supports the peasants and workers of France against the aristocracy for the first hour and a half. Suddenly, as the revolution begins, the movie switches and paints the same peasants and workers in hysterical and savage tones in the last hour. This was the feeling of the ruling oligarchs in America at the time, the Czar and the aristocracy were terrible people in Russia, but the communists were worse.
One interesting theme is that class does not matter and that people are good or bad regardless of what class they may belong to. This was a direct attack against the socialist ideal and practice of class-based parties.
As far as being a story teller, Griffith is flamboyant and exuberant. He throws in fabulous sets, costumes, make-up, acting and dazzling shots. The editing is dynamic. As with many of Spielberg's movie, great cinematic technique overcomes a lackluster story ("Close Encounters of the Third Kind," for example)
One can see some interesting psychological processes in Griffith from the movie. Notice that both Gish sisters are the objects of near rape in the film. Griffith has both the aristocracy and the revolutionists engaging in grand orgies. On one level we/Griffith are supposed to associate this type of hedonist behavior with anarchy, chaos and evil. On the other hand, these scenes contain some extraordinary beautiful and memorable shots. The line dances in the garden of the aristocracy and the swirling, mad dance of the revolutionaries through Parisian streets are quite extraordinary. Did Bergman get his ending for "The Seventh Seal" from this movie?
I also noticed that the film contains about three seconds of female nudity with the right breast of a woman in a fountain of wine clearly exposed. Shocking! I believe the film was made the same year that D.H. Lawrence released "Women in Love."
I also think it is interesting that both this movie and Chaplin's "City Lights" have a plot that turns on a young blind woman. It seems to be that the silent filmmakers may have thought of their lack of speech as a sort of handicap and thus the blind beautiful woman is a kind of metaphor for silent movies themselves.