Page 75 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

56 INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY
Marxist, economic-determinist philosophy which considers history progressive and
dialectical.
The prologue goes about uniting Marx and Griffith with considerable finesse.
Generally, the prologue seizes on certain vivid images of suffering and injustice in
the film and casts these in a Marxist framework. The prologue opens with a call to
those assembled:

Hear ye, hear ye, O people!… Hear, ye who have come hither: men and women,
young and old–and behold! Beyond your life in the distant depths of history
you will see a broad road that the human race has been following for
thousands of years. 23

Already it is clear that the delegates are in for a history class. The prologue
emphatically proclaims that the lessons of Intolerance are the lessons of the past.
The road is the central metaphor of the first half of the prologue, and on it can be
seen the bitter teachings of history. A look down the road reveals countless
examples of hardship in the lot of the common people. For example, the Girl is
‘tossed by the evil hand of life into the mud and dust’. 24
The road reveals something of a dialectic and a clear class conflict in the
constant presence of opposites. The powerful and the weak, the exploiter and the
exploited, are always present: ‘The ancient patrician and the plebeian, the king and
his serf, Babylon and a simple settlement, love and hate, light and darkness’. 25
The road metaphor disappears in the second half of the prologue and new
imagery emerges. Now ancient mountains represent history. Out of these
mountains of the past flow four small streams, the four tales of the film. The
streams run in separate but parallel paths, suggesting the flux and turmoil of history
–a counterpoint to the static, awesome mountains. We again see images of
exploitation with the stories of Intolerance.

Millions and billions of riches, created by slave labour and legally
accumulated by those who have seized control of the law: the factory owners,
the governors, the public prosecutors, the emperors and their fine retinue of
concubines and lackeys….
The French Court with its overdressed dolls and a gallows demanding a
sacrifice. A smoke-filled episode of religious baseness from the stately priests
and St Bartholomew’s Eve; a humble carpenter from Galilee; clean-handed
Pilate and the wild instincts of the crowd, shouting, ‘Crucify Him! Crucify
Him!’ 26

The prologue concludes with a promise of ultimate salvation from this history of
cruelty. The four currents flow down the mountains unto a gentle plain where they
merge into one stream. This is, in a sense, the synthesis, and it leads to the Soviet
utopia ‘In the beautiful valley of life’. The film shows the ugly lessons of the past,
but for the future there is the promise of the Soviet system: from ‘the mire and slime