Intolerance

UPC: 738329026721

Studio: Kino

MPAA Rating: NR   Contains:[Violence, Questionable for Children]

Summary: Sometime during the shooting of the landmark The Birth of a Nation, filmmaker D.W. Griffith probably wondered how he could top himself. In 1916, he showed how, with the awesome Intolerance. The film began humbly enough as a medium-budget feature entitled The Mother and the Law, wherein the lives of a poor but happily married couple are disrupted by the misguided interference of a "social reform" group. A series of unfortunate circumstances culminates in the husband's being sentenced to the gallows, a fate averted by a nick-of-time rescue engineered by his wife. In the wake of the protests attending the racist content of The Birth of a Nation, Griffith wanted to demonstrate the dangers of intolerance. The Mother and the Law filled the bill to some extent, but it just wasn't "big" enough to suit his purposes. Thus, using The Mother and the Law as merely the base of the film, Griffith added three more plotlines and expanded his cinematic thesis to epic proportions. The four separate stories of Intolerance are symbolically linked by Lillian Gish as the Woman Who Rocks the Cradle ("uniter of the here and hereafter"). The "Modern Story" is essentially The Mother and the Law; the "French Story" details the persecution of the Huguenots by Catherine de Medici (Josephine Crowell); the "Biblical Story" relates the last days of Jesus Christ (Howard Gaye); and the "Babylonian Story" concerns the defeat of King Belshazzar (Alfred Paget) by the hordes of Cyrus the Persian (George Siegmann). Rather than being related chronologically, the four stories are told in parallel fashion, slowly at first, and then with increasing rapidity. The action in the film's final two reels leaps back and forth in time between Babylon, Calvary, 15th century France, and contemporary California. Described by one historian as "the only film fugue," Intolerance baffled many filmgoers of 1916 -- and, indeed, it is still an exhausting, overwhelming experience, even for audiences accustomed to the split-second cutting and multilayered montage sequences popularized by Sergei Eisenstein, Orson Welles, Jean-Luc Godard, Joel Schumacher, and MTV. On a pure entertainment level, the Babylonian sequences are the most effective, played out against one of the largest, most elaborate exterior sets ever built for a single film. The most memorable character in this sequence is "The Mountain Girl," played by star on the rise Constance Talmadge; when the Babylonian scenes were re-released as a separate feature in 1919, Talmadge's tragic death scene was altered to accommodate a happily-ever-after denouement. Other superb performances are delivered by Mae Marsh and Robert Harron in the Modern Story, and by Eugene Pallette and Margery Wilson in the French Story. Remarkably sophisticated in some scenes, appallingly na?ve in others, Intolerance is a mixed bag dramatically, but one cannot deny that it is also a work of cinematic genius. The film did poorly upon its first release, not so much because its continuity was difficult to follow as because it preached a gospel of tolerance and pacifism to a nation preparing to enter World War I. Currently available prints of Intolerance run anywhere from 178 to 208 minutes; while it may be rough sledding at times, it remains essential viewing for any serious student of film technique. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Category: Epic

Awards: U.S. National Film Registry – Library of Congress

Features: Filmed introduction by Orson Welles
Excerpts from Cabiria (1914) and The Last Days of Pompeii (1914), two films that inspired Griffith to make Intolerance
Text excerpts from "Away With Meddlers: A Declaration of Independence" and "The Rise and Fall of Free Speech in America," two pamphlets published by D.W. Griffith at the time of Intolerance's release
Excerpts from The Fall of Babylon (1916) which offers an alternate (happy) ending to the Babylonian sequence
About the score

Intolerance

Format: DVD

Release Date: 12/10/2002

Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 Pre-1954 Standard

Runtime: 197 Minutes

Sides: 1

Number of Discs: 1

Chapters: Side #1 --
1. Opening Titles [1:24]
2. The Reformers [7:12]
3. Jerusalem, the Golden City [3:00]
4. Paris, A.D. 1572 [5:49]
5. Miss Jenkins Commits [4:32]
6. Babylon, 539 B.C. [10:26]
7. The Labor War [8:23]
8. The Marriage Market [9:55]
9. The Love Temple [3:02]
10. The Hopeful Geranium [8:08]
11. Wedding in Galilee [6:42]
12. The Dear One's Vow [4:48]
13. Cast the First Stone [2:46]
14. The Results of Reform [8:08]
15. Winds of War [5:50]
16. Modern Motherhood [9:02]
17. The Holy Wars [5:06]
18. The Siege [14:08]
19. Confidence [3:08]
20. The Feast of Belshazzar [12:06]
21. Permission to Slaughter [5:27]
22. The Sacred Dance [5:24]
23. A Musketeer's Fate [9:30]
24. The Verdicts [7:49]
25. The Last Dawn [4:15]
26. The Confession [5:52]
27. The Massacre [10:46]
28. The Hordes Invade [7:48]
29. On the Gallows [3:55]
30. Epilogue [2:55]

Lucia Bozzola

Stung by criticism of The Birth of a Nation (1915), D.W. Griffith decided to add three stories to his new feature about modern social inhumanity to create a vast epic discourse against the evils of intolerance. Even more ambitious in scale and structure than The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance moves forward through cross-cutting among four tales of injustice: the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 16th century France, the crucifixion of Christ, a modern workers' strike, and a story of ancient Babylon. The four are initially linked by the transitional image of a woman rocking a cradle, but Griffith speeds up the cross-cutting as each story reaches its climax, creating a quadruple action denouement. His virtuoso technical talents in handling both large-scale scenes and intimate personal moments are amply displayed in the landmark three-hour saga, but when Intolerance was released, it failed to match its predecessor's popularity. Its audience appeal was hampered by Griffith's preference for solemnly arguing ideas over creating involving characters, by its complex structure, and by its allegedly pacifist message as the U.S. was about to join World War I, so Intolerance became an expensive flop. Regardless, its formidable artistic influence can be seen from the work of Soviet montage master Sergei Eisenstein to Cecil B. DeMille's epics to Francis Ford Coppola's dual cross-cut narrative in The Godfather Part II (1974). ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

Cast and Crew: Monte Blue  Actor 
Max Davidson  Actor 
Roben Lawlor  Actor 
Bessie Love  Actor 
Pauline Starke  Actor 
Margery Wilson  Actor 
Erich Von Stroheim  Actor 
Mary Alden  Actor 
Josephine Crowell  Actor 
George Fawcett  Actor 
Clyde Hopkins  Actor 
Elmo Lincoln  Actor 
Felix Modjeska  Actor 
Ruth St. Denis  Actor 
Eleanor Washington  Actor 
Seena Owen  Actor 
William Brown  Actor 
Edward Dillon  Actor 
Ruth Handforth  Actor 
Alberta Lee  Actor 
Mrs. Arthur Mackley  Actor 
Wallace Reid  Actor 
Constance Talmadge  Actor 
Tod Browning  Actor 
Edmund Burns  Actor 
Pearl Elmore  Actor 
Ralph Lewis  Actor 
Marguerite Marsh  Actor 
A.D. Sears  Actor 
Gunther von Ritzau  Actor 
Donald Crisp  Actor 
Jack Cosgrove  Actor 
Lucille Brown  Actor 
Sam de Grasse  Actor 
Olga Grey  Actor 
William E. Lawrence  Actor 
Wilfred Lucas  Actor 
Eugene Pallette  Actor 
Carl Stockdale  Actor 
Tom Wilson  Actor 
Barney Bernard  Actor 
Kate Bruce  Actor 
Ted Duncan  Actor 
Mildred Harris  Actor 
Jennifer Lee  Actor 
Alma Rubens  Actor 
Fred Turner  Actor 
Elmer Clifton  Actor 
Howard Scott  Actor 
Frank Bennett  Actor 
Ruth Darling  Actor 
Howard Gaye  Actor 
Lillian Langdon  Actor 
Loyola O'Connor  Actor 
Maxfield Stanley  Actor 
Winifred Westover  Actor 
W.S. Van Dyke  Actor 
Spottiswood Aitken  Actor 
Gino Corrado  Actor 
Joseph Henaberry  Actor 
Vera Lewis  Actor 
George Siegmann  Actor 
George Walsh  Actor 
Lloyd Ingraham  Actor 
Eagle Eye  Actor 
Tod Browning  Screenwriter 
Carl Davis  Composer (Music Score) 
D.W. Griffith  Director 
D.W. Griffith  Composer (Music Score) 
D.W. Griffith  Producer 
D.W. Griffith  Screenwriter 
Lillian Gish  Actor 
Mae Marsh  Actor 
Robert Harron  Actor 
Miriam Cooper  Actor 
Walter Long  Actor 
Tully Marshall  Actor 
Alfred Paget  Actor 

Country: USA