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 (it's a case in which I admire the film more than I like it). 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…

***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…

Lately I’ve been returning to the features of D.W. Griffith, reviewing them in chronological order, and now I come to 1916’s Intolerance. I’ve reached the point where I no longer know how many times I’ve seen it. This time I might as well break it down analytically. My preferred digital version has a running time of 2:53:21, though its frame rate is a bit hot for my tastes — I like to watch it at 85% speed. Only once the temporal frequency of the film’s world syncs with my own can I find a way for my mind to understand it. But sticking with the runtime of 2:53:21, the breakdown of the narrative’s elements is such:

- 0.98%, 1:42 ……

An immense epic that ingeniously weaves four separate stories across four separate eras in history. D.W. Griffith’s virtuosity is prevalent throughout; each and every frame of Intolerance is a masterpiece in and of itself. Quite advanced when considering this film predates grandiose Hollywood epics by 40+ years. And while his technique is endlessly admirable, that’s not enough for me to see this as a masterpiece. A great film? Undoubtedly, yes. The interweaving of storylines was certainly an ingenious concept, but it’s execution left a lot to be desired. Each story was deserving of its own film, and some were far more compelling than others. The Modern story and the Babylon story were what carried the film; the modern story in…