Intolerance (1916)

Responding to criticisms of racism for his record-breaking The Birth of a Nation, filmmaking pioneer D.W. Griffith made this epic drama depicting intolerance through the ages.

D.W. Griffith’s 1915 The Birth of a Nation was a milestone in narrative filmmaking and a popular sensation, but a film condemned for its sympathetic depiction of the Ku Klux Klan. In answer, Griffith conceived this study of intolerance throughout human history, interspersing a Babylonian story, the Christ story, the events of the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 16th-century France, and a modern American story in which moral puritanism leads to a disenfranchised man being mistakenly condemned to death.

The film cuts between these stories with increasing rapidity as it builds to its exciting quadruple climax, though the complexity of this structure proved too enervating for contemporary audiences and the film was a commercial disaster. The Babylon set was at the time the most extravagant produced in Hollywood.

1916 USA
Directed by
D.W. Griffith
Produced by
D.W. Griffith
Featuring
Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Fred Turner
Running time
210 minutes

Ranked in The Greatest Films of All Time poll

Sight and Sound

Who voted for Intolerance

Critics

Phillip Bergson
UK
Jean-Loup Bourget
France
Godfrey Cheshire
USA
Ulrich Gregor
Germany
Tom Gunning
USA
Dave Kehr
USA
Richard Koszarski
USA
Xun Li
China
Peter Matthews
UK
Michał Oleszczyk
Poland
Martin Stollery
UK
Juan José Vidal
Argentina
Armond White
USA

Directors

Henry Hills
USA/Austria
Neil Jordan
Ireland

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