Intolerance poster & wallpaper

Lillian Gish, Howard Gaye, Constance Talmadge

After Birth of a Nation, what do you do for an encore, especially after said film has branded you a racist? D.W. Griffith, the silent era's "king of the world," mounted this melodramatic specta...( read more  read more... )cle of "Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages," four stories that illustrate "how hatred and intolerance have battled against love and charity." Critic Heywood Broun, upon the film's release, probably said it best: "Quite the most marvelous thing which has been put on the screen, but as a theory of life it is trite." But what's on the screen is dazzling!

Griffith interweaves the four parallel stories set, respectively, in the modern era (fuddy-duddy reformers and a workers' strike), Jerusalem (Christ's crucifixion), 1572 Paris (a "hotbed" of persecution against the Huguenots), and ancient Babylon. No collection of silent films is complete without this landmark, awe-inspiring epic, which really does boast a cast of thousands (the most memorable of which is Constance Talmadge as the spunky Mountain Girl). The fall of Babylon ranks with one of the great action set pieces, complete with racing chariots, a nifty decapitation (at the hands of Elmo Lincoln, the man who would be Tarzan), and falls from what appear to be incredible heights. The edge-of-your-seat climax to the modern story, a race against time to save an innocent young man from the electric chair, is another bravura sequence. --Donald Liebenson

Flixster Users

78% liked it

3,399 ratings

Critics

95% liked it

22 critics

Unrated, 3 hrs.

Directed by: D.W. Griffith

Release Date: September 5, 1916

Invite friends to see

DVD Release Date: December 10, 2002

Stats: 204 reviews

Get movie widget Recommend it Add to Favorites
report incorrect info

Photos

Intolerance Intolerance Intolerance
Upload a Photo |

View All Intolerance Photos (3)

Your Rating


clear rating
Share on: Facebook Twitter

Flixster Reviews (204)

  • sanjurosamurai
    September 22, 2009
    sanjurosamurai
    griffiths lengthy film is often cited as one of the great films in history, and because of its innovation in technique and massive budget it deserves most of its reputation. i did however find the film to be too slowly paced, resulting in an unnecessary length, and the film lack...( read more)ed needed clarity in proving its main point. in some ways the film is griffiths justification for his own racist themes in his previous film, which made the film labor too hard to be enthralling on its own without a back story. a must watch for die hard film fans, but not memorable.
  • kiriyamakazou
    February 18, 2007
    kiriyamakazou
    Griffith, against all the odds manages to top 'Birth of a Nation'. Here he weaves four different stories, from four different time periods. Each story is fantastic in it's own right, and Griffith creates a brilliantly paced film. The ending is one of the most action packed/intens...( read more)e in cinema history. All at once their is a car vs. train chase. The crucifixtion of christ, and the fall of babylon. Amazingly the battle scenes are not that far from 'Lord of the Rings' despite coming about 90 years previous.
  • jimbotender
    March 31, 2009
    jimbotender
    Redemption for Griffith came with an astonishing work of art.The Birth of an Empire it should be alternatively nicknamed,the second title of Love's persistence is the dark sheet of pessimism,4 eras of desperation and at the same time,visionary trembling.Directorial zeal or a capi...( read more)talist engrossment?You decide...
  • Dracula787
    March 13, 2008
    Dracula787
    It?s amazing how ahead of its time this movie was. The concept of four parallel stories based on a single subject is something that would have been ahead of its time in the late fifties, much less the nineteen teens. The production values are also huge and highly impressive. H...( read more)owever, all this lavishness does come at the sacrifice of a certain intimacy and a certain detail in each individual story. Also, as interesting as I find silent cinema, watching one of these movies for three hours is a little testing at times. Also the DVD Netflix sent was a piece of shit: the print was beyond awful even by the standards of a movie this old. It was so bad that a lot of the title cards were unreadable, and that made the viewing a bit intolerable (pun intended).
  • ElCochran90
    October 21, 2009
    ElCochran90
    "The fragrant mystery of your body is greater than the mystery of life."

    INTOLERANCE: LOVE'S STRUGGLE THROUGHOUT THE AGES (1916)


    Director: D.W. Griffith
    Country: United States of America
    Genre: Drama / Romance
    Length...( read more): 197 minutes

    Photobucket


    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 love towards our brothers, sons of God, has conquered the big screens around the world despite the constant criticism and false prejudices against Griffith's "apology for the racism he applied in Birth of a Nation" (1915). There are few moments in the history of cinema where cinematic projects that jump high in the sky in order to reach a colossal status of nearly imperial worshipping establish the very foundations of filmmaking for future decades to come. Griffith's towering achievement is considered as one of the most ambitious epic films ever created through the lens of a master's genius. Its power and glory are utterly unprecedented, but few are the times when specific directors have a much deeper purpose than just creating a masterpiece. This is a gift to the world so it can be admired, applauded and taken as a direct reference so modern society can nostalgically appreciate and remember the purest and truest definition of cinema. No matter how blasphemous a filmic project may be considered under determined social standards. Cinema is an art form no matter from which particular perspective is seen, and that is a fact. It can also be a depiction of the grimmest characteristics of reality and, most of the times, it is the most meaningful primary source for timeless and critically acclaimed auteurs throughout history. In the case of Griffith's best film, it is its sincerity and multiphacetic brilliance.

    Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages presents a premise that had never been shown before. Ironically, its size is so huge that it was never remade. It has not yet. The easiest and perhaps the most obvious treatment its plot would obtain was a spoof, a fact that actually happened thanks to Buster Keaton's Three Ages (1923). Griffith's masterpiece is set on four different historical periods. On one hand, the downfall of ancient Babylon is caused by those who rejected a religious sectarianism due to different Babylonian gods and ended up betraying the king in the year of 539 B.C. On the other hand, we have key moments in the life of Jesus Christ including the sentence He had by the hands of the Pharisees circa 27 B.C., culminating in his crucifixion. On one arm, we are compelled to hold the story of the events that led to the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in the times of King Charles the IX during the French Renaissance of 1572, including the failure of the Edict of Toleration. Finally, we are asked to hold with the remaining arm a story set in modern America (1914) that deals with a young boy and her mother whose lives are attempted to be destroyed by social reformers when he is wrongly convicted of the murder of a comrade and is sentenced to execution. The film was shown out of competition at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival.

    Instead of resorting to a linear and conventional narrative structure, Griffith's masterfulness relies on his extraordinary and possibly unparalleled ability of intertwining the four different stories into one single film, consequently creating a suspenseful crosscutting that causes the sensation of satisfactory thrilling sequences and building emotional connections between characters from different eras. As implied in the title, intolerance and its consequent demonstrations, such as hatred, racism and moral indifference, destroy love, a human emotion that is magically transformed in a suffering, implicit character. It was intolerance towards different religious devotees that caused the fall of ancient Babylon. It was intolerance the source of hatred and the catastrophic St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre because of the rejection of an edict which purpose is to stop and prevent the persecution of members of any particular religion that willingly execute the customs and habits that such religion demands. It was intolerance that governed the minds of the skeptical Pharisees that led Jesus Christ to his historical crucifixion despite Him being the son of God who died for the Eternal Salvation of humankind, despite being God's will in the first place. It was intolerance the cause of crime, capitalist conflicts and Puritanism that have led to the deterioration of the American lifestyle, an event that can be immediately contrasted with several wars of the actuality world that are caused by similar reasons related to the aforementioned topics. Was justice served' For appropriately giving a possible answer of such eternally debated question, one must comprehend the strong Catholic influence that D.W. Griffith had through the process of the making of this legendary epic.

    God is both an implicit and an explicit character through the depiction of the life of Jesus Christ. Every single historical period shown in Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages clearly demonstrates how God has several purposes for the human race through the execution of his superior will. His omnipotence, omnipresence and wisdom use the most degrading characteristics of the human soul as a motor for unleashing an intentional chain reaction of events that nowadays form the bases of human history. The extraordinary editing, a technical aspect that evidently influenced the perfection that Sergei M. Eisenstein could finally reach several years later, magically transports us from one massive, beautifully decorated and masterfully developed and filmed scenario to another. The art direction is the best that has ever been planned in the gracious history of the motion picture, not to mention the spellbinding design of Babylon. The tension it finally creates is a marvelous achievement of massively majestic amazement and cinema being taken to artistic heights that could have never be dreamed of. A most breathtaking aspect that still was in the process of filmic development is the camera work, a camera that has ambitious angles, a balance to equalize the magnitude of the images and landscapes portrayed throughout, and a perspective that lets us fly like an eagle just to land to a wonderfully orchestrated Babylonian dance sequence. What is the result? The result is a heart-racing, quickly-edited, explosive ending sequence where the climax and conclusion of every story is alternately shown in nonstop suspense!

    The eternal hand that rocks the cradle is juxtaposed with the inevitable passing of time. Time is made of time and that's it. It may be taken as gold. It may be used in the most productive way. A balance between productiveness and leisure time may be applied. The truth is that our lifetime is formed by the free will and consequent decisions that God has given to us, that undeniable and very present substance that give man the ability to change the course of history through the power and influence of God in our lives. God exists, and His existence makes skeptical and atheist people to question where God is. "If God exists and is a loving God, why does He permit all of these events to occur?" is the strongest question that will never be answered to them because of their constant rejection of the truth, because of their agnosticism. Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages is the personal answer of Griffith towards this issue, and I mostly concord. It is not God; it is man who decides to create social classes, to support poverty, to create stereotypes, to have racist beliefs, to create an anarchic lifestyle and to believe in false philosophies and other nonexistent gods, including the idolization of political figures that create mindless dictatorships just because of the intelligence they possessed. Open your eyes, believe the truth, accept God in your heart, stop repeating the false statement of Griffith being a racist since his past film just because it is the universal cinematic opinion, read the Holy Bible and see this film. It features one of the best directions ever and, even nowadays, the baby inside the cradle rocked by God hasn't fully matured. It is time to learn.

    100/100
  • MetalMario2
    September 26, 2009
    MetalMario2
    Long-winded, disjointed, and the poor quality of the film made it extremely difficult to read the placards.
  • FlyingSolo2009
    August 27, 2009
    FlyingSolo2009
    I think that I can go ahead and pass on this one.
  • HuskersNC949597
    August 22, 2009
    HuskersNC949597
    The set design, holy crap. Large.
  • bleedirony
    August 3, 2009
    bleedirony
    "Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages" Intolerance trumps "The Birth of A Nation" and also any film that claims it's scope is the biggest. This is the epitome of "Epic". The sheer brilliance of Intolerance is something that cannot be denied.
  • HorrorMovieCinema
    June 8, 2009
    HorrorMovieCinema
    "The Cruel Hand of Intolerance"



    Griffeth's design for this film is to juxtapose four stories from different periods of history that illustrate "Love's struggle throughout the ages." These include a selection of events from the life of Jesus; a tale from ancient Baby...( read more)lon, whose king is betrayed by those who resent his rejection of relegious sectarianism; the story of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of French Protestants by King Charles the IX of France on the perfidious advice of his mother;

    and a modern story in which a young boy, wrongly convicted of the murder of a companion, is rescued from execution at the last minute by the intervention of his beloved, who gains a pardon from the governor. These stories are not presented in series. Instead, Griffeth cuts from one to another and often introduces suspensful crosscutting with the stories as well.

View All Intolerance Reviews

Critic Reviews

No recent reviews.

View more Intolerance reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

Comments

This board looks lonely. Be the first to talk about "Intolerance" !

Post A Comment | View All Comments

Critic ratings and reviews powered by RottenTomatoes.com

Fresh (60% or more critics rated the movie positively)

Rotten (59% or fewer critics rated the movie positively)

All Rotten Tomatoes content is used under license from Rotten Tomatoes. Rotten Tomatoes, Certified Fresh, and the Tomatometer are the trademarks of Incfusion Corporation, d/b/a Rotten Tomatoes, a subsidiary of IGN Entertainment, Inc.

Cast

More Like This

Click a thumb to vote on that suggestion, or add your own suggestions.

  • Cabiria
    Cabiria (100%)
  • 300
    300 (58%)
  • The Birth of a Nation
    The Birth of a Nation (100%)
  • Blade af Satans bog (Leaves Out of the Book of Satan) (Leaves from Satan's Book)
    Blade af Satans bog (Leaves Out of the Book o... (100%)

More Movies like Intolerance

Facts

No facts approved yet. Be the first

Intolerance : Watch Free on TV

Intolerance Trivia

  • In a subtle satire on prejudice and intolerance, Tobey Maguire shows a small town how to live life to the full.   Answer »
  • *** DW Griffith Was Criticised For The Racism In The Birth Of A Nation. Which Film Did He Make Afterwards In Self-Defence***  Answer »
  • wHO DIRECTED THIS MOVIE? INTOLERANCE  Answer »
  • Who says they are famous for their intolerance in Vicky, Cristina , Barcelona ?  Answer »
More Intolerance Trivia

Movie Quizzes

No quizzes for Intolerance. Want to create one?

Video Clips

No video clips yet. Want to upload one?

Meet Other Fans

Add Intolerance to favorites

Recent News

No recent headlines. Got one?

Recent Lists

Make a List |

View All Lists

Most Popular Skin

No skins yet. Interested in creating one?