Synopsis
The Cruel Hand of Intolerance
The story of a poor young woman, separated by prejudice from her husband and baby, is interwoven with tales of intolerance from throughout history.
1916 Directed by D. W. Griffith
The story of a poor young woman, separated by prejudice from her husband and baby, is interwoven with tales of intolerance from throughout history.
Lillian Gish Mae Marsh Robert Harron F.A. Turner Sam De Grasse Vera Lewis Lillian Langdon Olga Grey Erich von Ritzau Bessie Love Margery Wilson Eugene Pallette Spottiswoode Aitken Ruth Handforth Elmer Clifton Seena Owen Carl Stockdale Mary Alden Pearl Elmore Julia Mackley Miriam Cooper Walter Long Tom Wilson Ralph Lewis Lloyd Ingraham John P. McCarthy Monte Blue Marguerite Marsh Edward Dillon Show All…
Intolerance: A Sun-Play of the Ages, The Mother and the Law, Intolerancia, Intoleranz - Die Tragödie der Menschheit, Нетерпимость, 인톨러런스
AFI Top 52 Project - #49
Yeah, I just couldn’t get into this at all. I knew going in it was going to be a tough watch (a 3 hour silent film are you kidding me with this shit?!) but the way the separate stories were interwoven made it even harder to keep up with what was going on. I will say that the sets were truly impressive things of exquisite beauty. It just seems like some of that incredible detail should have gone into the editing.
Supposedly Griffith made this as a sort of atonement for the blatantly racist Birth of a Nation, but if you’re replacing racism with a hefty dose of misogyny then you’re really not doing…
Intolerance, burning and slaying. Intolerance is D. W. Griffith's response to the condemnations he had received in regards to The Birth of a Nation, which has over the years been criticized for its racist overtones yet also praised for its technological innovations for film history. As for D. W. Griffith's Intolerance, I feel as if what Griffith is leaving behind made me rethink what I had perceived of him after The Birth of a Nation, because Intolerance goes ahead and speaks out against how closed-minded society's viewpoints may be, within all eras, age groups, and races. It's a film that is already a century old, and it is so ahead of its own time, it cannot be remade today no…
***One of the best 150 films I have ever seen.***
Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages... Oh, what a glorious and tear-inducing cinematographic creation was born almost a century ago. Oh, what a compelling and self-reflexive drama of epic proportions gave cinema an outstanding respect. Oh, what a sophisticated and groundbreaking epitome of the strong emotional connection existent between love and several forms of intolerance Griffith attempted to create. Oh, what a faithful representation of different eras of human history making love until the cataclysmic final explosion ensues an inevitable, yet truthful conclusion about the decaying of the human race due to its imaginary vainglory. Oh, what an audacious depiction of violence contrasted with evil intentions and the lack of…
With the possible exception of True Heart Susie, Griffith's non-formal ideas never progressed past Victorian melodrama. So most of the ideas parlayed within the actual narratives of Intolerance are often precariously simple tales of heroes and villains - with the exception of the "Mother and the Law" sequence. Being that this section of the film was intended originally as a stand-alone feature (and eventually released as so with added footage in 1919) it makes sense that it's the only one which has any serious emotional impact within the individual segments it is chopped up into. However, this is not 'The Mother and the Law,' nor 'The Fall of Babylon,' but a film made of four stories which begin and end…
If the cinematic experience is one that only unfolds in the present, then Intolerance takes four different periods of history which have existed in linear time and places them within a span of simultaneity - this can only be done through cinematic means. It's one of the purest examples of Kubrick's dictum that it is editing which makes cinema distinct from other art forms. Better analysis in the other write-up I did - but I think the last 40 mins are maybe unparalleled: no Manchiean dualisms - we rip through space and time through each cut, but because of the thematic linkage, each juxtaposition builds a new idea out of the last, even as the speed increases. It's the moment where narrative montage develops into what will become theoretical montage. We should be glad we're lucky enough that something this sophisticated can also be the most ambitious motion picture ever made.
Consistent shots of Lillian Gish perpetually rocking serves as the intervening section in D.W. Griffith's Intolerance, a film which jumps back and forth among a quartet of tales. It spotlights a remarkable exhibition of sets and costumes, along with a massive deployment of extras for the rightfully famous battle of Babylon sequence, which long afterwards continued as a Hollywood landmark. Each story exhibits how love and charity have struggled against hatred and bigotry through the ages, and it's ultimately a response to the intolerance which obstructed the exhibition of his earlier movie, The Birth of a Nation. Intolerance is a shrine to Griffith's ambitious talent and one of the landmarks in cinematic history.
To think Intolerance is 105 years-old might just be the most mystifying fact of the movies, even when considering its religiously overwrought presentation. Overruling some mildly offensive appropriation, unlike The Birth of a Nation, Griffith’s next feature isn’t besmirched by the same deplorable racism and insidious sympathy for the confederacy, allowing modern audiences to watch it without feeling sick to their stomachs by the time it reaches its conclusion. Alongside Birth, it establishes Griffith as the first true action filmmaker — a title birthed out of a 3-hour spectacle of fire and blood, with some 3,000 extras in tow. It’s the inception of the cinematic language as we now know it; the inconceivable budget, the use of the closeup for…
Not. Even. The Europeans were so far ahead of this in 1916 it isn't even funny -- even their unambitious weekly-program pop-movies, sometimes. The better ones. All it has going for it is the big-ass sets and that assembly-line crosscutting, a mechanical process for creating meaning... but those are pretty American qualities, so it could be that's why it's been preeminent in the history books.
I guess I'll watch the alternate cut of The Mother And The Law one of these days, cuz that's the only part of this that made any impression at all.
PS: There's a thematic thread unifying the four unconnected stories? Really? Only feebly there, I hardly even noticed it ever. Thinking this is ahistorical, and…
After the second watch I’m thinking this is the best movie I’ve ever seen. I’m usually not one to make this sort of judgement so hastily, but this is the kind of movie that makes you reconsider just about any other that you’ve watched. Intolerance is constantly giving you so much information that you fear throughout the runtime that you will have forgotten key elements by the end. But when the picture is finished, you can’t deny the enormity of what you’ve seen. This film is of the caliber of art which, after taking it in, makes you pause and think about how to proceed, something such scant few movies have been able to achieve in the history of the…
The Cohen Films restoration is absolutely remarkable and the nearly 100-year-old film plays as relentlessly MODERN. If you think you know this picture but haven't seen it in a while, check it out again, it is AMAZING.
I blame myself for this one... my first ever silent film and I picked one that was THREE HOURS!
I found the title cards to be inconsistent, some were fine while others were 3x as long. I think if they cut them properly they would save me at least 25 minutes.
The sets were impressive but I didn't connect to any of the stories being shown.
Astounding production design and unbelievable scale make Intolerance indisputably epic, but D. W. Griffith really bites off more than he can chew. Seriously, it’s like watching a four-year-old try to fit a five-course-meal in their mouth.
This movie attempts to tell four stories — the fall of Babylon, the death of Christ, the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, and a contemporary crime-romance — and shakily unifies them under the titular theme. None of the stories work particularly well on their own, and Griffith’s swing at bringing them together thematically is both a massive stretch and laughably overstated. It’s like the movie version of a high school freshman’s frenzied draft of their first argumentative essay — admirably ambitious, undoubtedly well-intentioned, and peppered with moments of brilliance and poignance; but the frequently-repeated thesis, the tenuous evidence, and the weak transitions mean that the overall project can’t quite come together successfully.
Make sure you find a proper cut of this. We ended up watching a 2 hour cut on Prime. Archive.org has a legit version.
I felt like I'd been watching this for hours and then the title card "act 2" slammed on screen.
It was a powerful moment.
The problem with choosing "intolerance" as a theme for your time-sprawling opus is that it is so shapeless and blunt as to lose all meaning. Literally anything can be described as "intolerance" from a certain perspective: Your coworker stole your sandwich from the fridge? He is intolerant of your right to possess pastrami in communal space.
Thus we get DW Griffith's "Intolerance" subtitled "Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages," and, philosophically, it's a lot of dreck. We're supposed to believe the Women's Suffrage movement is a moral evil in line with Pontius Pilate and the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre.
This gets even hairier when you dig into the film's origin story. Griffith was in the midst of a huge backlash for…
The film Intolerance was released in 1916, as a response and apology for the film The Birth of a Nation, which was released by the same people a year earlier. D. W. Griffith, the director for both films, denies that it’s an apology for The Birth of A Nation. I haven’t seen The Birth of A Nation, and I don’t think I want to, the only thing I know about that film is that it’s about the Klan and it’s really racist. Many of the characters in this film don’t have names because Griffith wanted them to be representative of different types of people. Intolerance also had mixed reviews and was a financial bomb when it was released but has…
I have to respect the ambition here, even if it feels pretty overstuffed. I wasn't all that engaged in the various stories, but I was definitely impressed by how much of a technical achievement this is. It really is way ahead of its time. The music and visuals are both fantastic.
Overall though, this movie really overstays its welcome. I mostly lost interest after the first 90 minutes and couldn't keep up with some of the stories.
Revolutionary for its time. Completely changed the game regarding what film as a medium could do. The cuts, special effects, and narrative structure are all incredibly innovative. It doesn’t get 5 stars for me though because, with the exception of the Babylonian sequences, the plot in all four narratives isn’t all that interesting. And you know, the fact that this film was D.W. Griffith’s “response” to the backlash he received for Birth of A Nation is pretty pathetic.
A massive piece of parallel editing that deserves to be as respected (or almost as respected) as it is in film history. Whether you give it those props for being simply foundational or enthralling on its own is up to you, but it's definitely one or both of those things. I say both.
"Intolerance" is used pretty broadly here to describe cyclical cruelty, greed, and meanness in general. Keeping his target that vague actually helps this movie to age well, even if you still get some unnecessary polemics like this one:
"When women cease to attract men they often seek Reform as a second choice."
The morality of Intolerance is enough to make the 200 minute picture coherent, but the…
The first question one should ask in the pursuit of understanding D.W Griffith’s Intolerance begins not at the broad nature of the film, but at the title itself. Why the term “Intolerance”? Sure, the subject matter explored by the film’s sprawling narrative that transcends eras is that of prejudice descending into hate before blossoming again into pure chaos, but why “intolerance” in particular? Why not the few other words I used to describe the thematic flow of Griffith’s epic?
To understand the significance of intolerance, both as an idea and as the film’s title, one has to understand the type of filmmaker D.W. Griffith is - a filmmaker of observation, less so of passion and intimacy. Griffith’s strength and shortcoming…
This could have been easily a 4.5 with a different editing.
It was unfortunately quite confusing, but I can’t say I liked it less than “The Birth of a Nation”..
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