Griffith's great 1916 film features four separate stories interwoven. DVD special features include excerpts from "Cabviria" and "Last Days of Pompeii;" also an excerpt of an alternative ending for "Fall of Babylon," a filmed introduction by Orson Welles, more.
D.W. Griffith's large-scale epic spans several centuries and cultures. The film is made up of four distinct stories linked solely by a single common thread: intolerance. Three of the stories are based on historical fact: France during the reign of Charles IX; the birth and crucifixion of Christ; and the fall of Babylonia. The fourth tale is a "modern" story of greed, cruelty and betrayal.
Silent film director D.W. Griffith's biggest, most ambitious spectacle uses stories from different times and places to illustrate humanity's intolerance of religious differences throughout the ages. The most visually impressive of these chronicles is the fall of Babylon, for which Griffith built the largest sets in Hollywood and filled them with thousands of extras; there's also Christ's crucifixion and the massacre of the Heugenots in 15th century France. The most emotionally involving tale is the "modern" one, about a poor girl (Mae Marsh) whose life is repeatedly ruined by the zealotry of social reformers. The image of a mother (Lillian Gish) rocking her child in a cradle ("the uniter of the here and hereafter") links the stories. At one point, angels reach down from heaven to stop soldiers in midbattle, making it clear that Griffith intended this follow-up to THE BIRTH OF A NATION as a message of global peace and love (and an answer to his critics' accusations of racism). For a nation poised to enter World War I, this was perhaps the wrong message, and INTOLERANCE opened to mixed reviews and poor attendance. It is now rightly recognized as a unique work of cinematic art. The restored version includes color-tinted scenes.
Theatrical release: September 5, 1916.
INTOLERANCE was an original selection to the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 1989.
INTOLERANCE was released two years after THE BIRTH OF A NATION, and is widely regarded as director D.W. Griffith's protest and self-defense against the charges of racism leveled at him for BIRTH's glorification of the Ku Klux Klan.
Among the dancers in the Babylonian sequence was the young Martha Graham, performing at the time with modern dance choreographer Ruth St. Denis's company.
As was the case with THE BIRTH OF A NATION, Griffith continued to tinker with the finished product during the following years, cutting out scenes and re-editing. But in 1989, Gillian B. Anderson and Peter Williamson created a reconstructed version using all available footage as well as still photographs to substitute for missing sequences; this restoration gave a better sense of what the original print might have been like. This version was shown at the New York Film Festival on October 29, 1989.
The film was very costly and not terribly successful at the time; Griffith chose to reedit the individual stories into shorts and also release them separately.
Intolerance Reviews:
"...There has never been a movie quite like INTOLERANCE, and few, if any, have been so influential..."
-- Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
"...Here Griffith's remarkable editing scheme takes the film into virtually abstract realms, making it also a large-scale meditation on the nature of cinematic space and narrative construction..."
-- Brad Stevens, Sight and Sound
"...[With] miraculous cinematography, and charismatic performances..."-- Entertainment Weekly Staff, Entertainment Weekly
Customer Intolerance Reviews Customer Intolerance DVD Reviews
Average Rating: (4.8 out of 5 stars)
a great silent movie Four differents histories about the intolerance theme: The mother and the law, the passion of the Christ, S. Bartolomeo's night and the Babilonia fall.
In the passion of the Christ, Erich Von
Stroheim, play a pharisee.
Great silent movie, in complete version, unpublished in Italy.
Thaks at Kino Video for this great masterpieces.
Submitted by enniosterchele (Italy) Was This Review Helpful? YesNo
Intolerance es cine en estado puro Desde hace mucho tiempo había deseado poder tener una copia de Intolerance. Por fin, gracias a Video Universe he conseguido una fantástica. El film ha completado totalmente mis espectativas. La narración va adquiriendo un ritmo fantástico, para llegar a un final glorioso.La fotografía ha marcado el camino a todos los que han venido después.Espero que los que estén interesados en ver esta película, queden tan satisfechos como yo. Saludos. Submitted by fernandomoles (St. Antoni de Calonge, Girona, España) Was This Review Helpful? YesNo
D. W. Griffith Does It Again! Another epic from D. W. Griffith. Kind of confusing for me the first time viewing it. (I was watching a poor quality budget copy. Hard to read many title cards it was so poor). I enjoyed it more the second time. And the third time. The Babylon set is incredible!! Constance Talmadge plays an interseting part as a wild mountain girl.
I have seen the Delta Entertainment version dvd and another budget version dvd. Buy the Delta version. I am happy with it. It is at least ten times better in quality! Honest. Don't buy the other cheap brand. I have not not seen the more expensive versions. Submitted by MIKE (Sacramento, CA) Was This Review Helpful? YesNo This review is for a different format.
Intollerance is Riveting It's hard to believe that a silent film could be so engrossing. I recently watched it for the first time ... and then watched it again. I have shown it to my wife and a buddy. They were both riveted to the screen. It's amazing how much it draws you in emotionally. Of course, the sets are unbelievably huge and with a cast of 125,000 and 7,500 horses plus elephants - it's really a must see! Warning - it starts out slowly (and it's pretty long too), but as it gets towards the end it moves more quickly and you find yourself forgetting to breathe.
I saw the KINO release available from my local library. The supplemental material helped me understand what Griffith was getting at and also what other film makers were doing at the time - esp. in Europe. It's stunning how big the productions were in the past. I mean they built miles of sets and towns and thousands of prop pieces - the only thing even close to this scale is the LORD OF THE RINGS - and even then Griffith obviously surpasses on the scale issue - no contest.
I think Griffith was right - film is a powerful media. Submitted by leberle (Boston, Massachusetts) Was This Review Helpful? YesNo This review is for a different format.
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Intolerance DVD
Intolerance DVD Features
Region 1 Keep Case Full Frame - 1.33 Additional Release Material: Film Clips:
1. CABIRIA (1914) 2. THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII (1914) 3. "The Fall of Babylon" Introduction: Orson Welles Interactive Features: Interactive Menus Scene Access
D. W. Griffith Does It Again!
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