Trivia / Intolerance

• Acting for Two: Constance Talmage as The Mountain Girl and Princess Margaret of Valois.
• Dear Negative Reader: D. W. Griffith made the film as a response to criticism of The Birth of a Nation, which he misinterpreted as political correctness and intolerance of him personally, rather than justified criticism of the film's horrifically racist content. Suffice it to say, Griffith bungled his message so badly the film comes across as anti-racism.
• Focus Group Ending: According to Lillian Gish's memoir, D. W. Griffith went on the road and spoke to audiences when the film made its premiere in several cities. He then took notes on which scenes got tepid responses and edited them out before going on the next city. That's why the Babylonian and modern stories are longer than the Jesus and Huguenot sections. (All four stories were originally roughly the same length.) In 1919, he released a new movie fashioned out of all the footage from the Babylon section with newly shot scenes that give the Mountain Girl a happier ending.
• Follow the Leader: The Fall of Babylon story, especially in set design and overall look, bears an obvious debt to 1914 Italian Ancient Rome Epic Movie Cabiria.
• George Lucas Altered Version: Griffith revised the film while it was still in theatres based on audience responses and, as The Mountain Girl proved the most popular character, went back and filmed new scenes for the Babylon story, culminating in releasing all the footage as a standalone feature under the title The Fall of Babylon in 1919, wherein The Mountain Girl has a Happy Ending in which she survives and is reunited with The Rhapsode. The modern story likewise had new footage filmed and was released as a separate feature the same year, titled The Mother and the Law, with a major Downer Ending where the baby dies (an alternate ending exists where The Dear One is reunited with her child), and a title card is added claiming the striking workers were fired at with blanks to scare them due to the beginning of the Red Scare.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Several home releases have gone out of print, such as the Official Thames Silents Restoration. The film is, however, in the Public Domain and can viewed freely online.
• Missing Episode: The original run time was 210 minutes, or three and a half hours. The longest extant cut is 177 minutes, leaving the status of the remaining half an hour of footage unknown (Griffith is known to have edited out parts of the Crucifixion of Christ and the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre stories). As well, plenty of material was filmed but never included in any version of the film, like the attempted assassination of Admiral Coligny in the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre story.
• No Stunt Double: Constance Talmage drove the chariot herself in the Babylon segment. Two women seated behind her at a theatre showing the film doubted her:
  They said, 'Of course she never really drove those horses herself. Somebody doubled for her.' Know what I did? I turned around and told them, 'I wish I could show you my knees, all black and blue even yet from being cracked up against the dashboard of that chariot!'
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Cameraman Karl Brown claimed a scene was filmed of the Babylonian harem showing full frontal nudity, but he was not allowed on set that day for being too young. No surviving version of the film exists with a scene as Brown described, but whether the footage was lost or never filmed is unknown.
• Recut: D. W. Griffith made several revisions to the film while it was still in theaters, removing some scenes in accordance to audience responses. In the years since, due to it being in the Public Domain, four main versions have been released on home video:
  • The Killiam Shows version. Converted from a 16mm print and featuring an organ score by Gaylord Carter. 176 minutes long, the most complete version available on home video. Possibly the most widely seen version.
  • The Official Thames Silents Restoration. A formal restoration by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill and prepared by Thames Television using original 35mm prints with an orchestral score by Carl Davis. Released on VHS in 1989 by HBO. 177 minutes long, not as complete as the Killiam Shows version, but featuring footage not seen in that version.
  • The Kino International version. Released in 2002 using 35mm prints with a synthetic orchestral score by Joseph Turrin. Transferred at a slower framerate than the previous two for a longer run time of 197 minutes, but is less complete than either one. The alternate happy ending in the Fall of Babylon story, in which the Mountain Girl survives and is reunited with the Rhapsode, is included on the DVD.
  • The Restored Digital Cinema version. By ZZ Productions in collaboration with the Danish Film Institute and Arte France, a restoration of the version screened at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in April 1917. Runs 177 minutes long. Premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2007.
• What Could Have Been:
  • D. W. Griffith started planning the modern story, originally titled "The Mother and the Law", soon after the release of The Birth of a Nation, but once both the financial success and negative press for that film came in, he expanded it to include the other three stories as a response to the criticism.
  • A major scene from the French story showing the attempted assassination of Admiral Coligny was filmed, but cut before release and is not included in any cut of the film. It is unknown if any footage survives.

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