The Battle of Hearts

This film (drama)Also known asIntolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages，is aUnited StatesProducerwomen sex，At1916Released in year 。The dialogue language isEnglish，Current Douban rating8.7(For reference only)。

This film, also titled "The Battle of Hearts," is D.W. Griffith's most ambitious work. Inspired by the astonishing success of "The Birth of a Nation," Griffith was determined to create an even grander and deeper film. He spent a year and a half and invested two million dollars to produce a 220-minute epic (the original version was 480 minutes long). Unfortunately, when the film premiered in New York in September 1916, it did not receive the expected acclaim. There are many reasons for the film's failure at the box office, the main one being that the story structure Griffith employed was too complex, with directorial techniques that exceeded the audience's capacity for acceptance at that time. Coupled with the overly serious theme, which advocated for tolerance and opposed violence, it clashed with the high spirits of American involvement in World War I, leading to its lack of widespread appeal. However, it cannot be denied that this is a timeless masterpiece of cinematic art. "Intolerance" consists of four stories set in different eras: the fall of Babylon, the Passion of Jesus Christ, the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in France, and the labor-capital conflicts in early 20th-century America. Griffith described his own concept: "The four great cyclical stories flow like four rivers, initially dispersed and peacefully flowing, ultimately merging into a powerful, rushing torrent." The film opens with a shot of a mother rocking a cradle, interspersed with a line from Walt Whitman's poem: "As it was yesterday, so is it today; the cycles of human emotions are endless. The cradle rocks, bringing humanity the same passions, the same joys and sorrows." After this subtitle, the first modern story, which sets the tone for the entire film, unfolds. As the plot progresses, the director frequently intercuts with the other three stories, allowing for parallel development. In the end, the scene returns to the mother and the cradle, presenting the theme of "human evolution from intolerance to tolerance." The core modern story, "Mother and Law," depicts four unemployed workers who come from a small town to the city in search of jobs; some go astray, while others long for a normal family life. The upright male protagonist is falsely accused of murder and sentenced to death. On the day of his execution, the true culprit has a change of heart and saves him at the last moment. From this story, one can observe the general social conditions in early 20th-century America: rural instability, urban shadows and complexities, labor struggles, and numerous legal issues. Griffith further displayed his outstanding talent in "parallel editing" in this film. He used comparative editing of similar scenes from the four stories, creating a unified and powerful narrative through the repeated similar shots, which built up a passionate emotional climax in the plot. For instance, there is a segment edited as follows: 1. Jesus Christ is marched forward by soldiers; 2. A young woman from Babylon rushes to inform her lover of the king's peril; 3. A modern girl desperately runs to save her lover; 4. During the Paris Massacre, a Protestant attempts to rescue his fiancée amid the chaos of the streets. Griffith employs techniques like mobile photography, camera angles, and transitions to link the four parallel developments smoothly and tightly. He even uses brief flashback techniques in some segments of the story to convey the plot, demonstrating that his "film grammar" far surpassed that of contemporaneous directors. Additionally, Griffith pioneered the use of "close-ups" and "extreme long shots" to enhance the audience's psychological engagement (for example, a close-up of a woman's clenched hand reveals her anxiety upon hearing about her husband's death sentence; an extreme long shot of a capitalist alone in his office suggests his immense power). He also utilized film tinting to enhance various special effects (e.g., blue-tinted film for night scenes, yellow-tinted film for rooms lit by lamps, red-tinted film for the burning of Babylon). Although this film tinting method was not Griffith's invention, no one had used it so boldly and comprehensively in a single film as he did. Amazingly, such a complex production had no complete script from start to finish, relying instead solely on Griffith's improvisation. Furthermore, there were no design sketches for the sets, yet Griffith managed to build a magnificent Babylonian set. During the filming of the siege of Jerusalem, he simultaneously employed 15,000 extras and 250 chariots in a single day. His ambitious approach left contemporary Italian historical epics looking inferior, showcasing his confidence in his creative abilities. Perhaps as Griffith himself put it: "Art is often revolutionary, explosive, and spectacular." The performances both in front of and behind the cameras in "Intolerance" demonstrate that Griffith was indeed a hands-on artist.