| Intolerance | |
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Theatrical poster |
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| Directed by | D. W. Griffith |
| Produced by | D. W. Griffith |
| Written by | D.W. Griffith Hettie Grey Baker Tod Browning Anita Loos Mary H. O'Connor Walt Whitman Frank E. Woods |
| Starring | Mae Marsh Robert Harron Constance Talmadge Lillian Gish Josephine Crowell Margery Wilson Frank Bennett Elmer Clifton Miriam Cooper Alfred Paget |
| Music by | Joseph Carl Breil Carl Davis |
| Cinematography | Billy Bitzer |
| Editing by | D. W. Griffith James Smith Rose Smith |
| Distributed by | Triangle Distributing Corporation |
| Release date(s) | September 5, 1916 |
| Running time | 3 hours, 30 minutes (original version) 3 hours, 17 minutes (most modern cuts) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | Silent film English intertitles |
| Budget | $2,000,000[1] |
Intolerance is a 1916 American silent film directed by D. W. Griffith and is considered one of the great masterpieces of the Silent Era.[2] The three-and-a-half hour epic intercuts four parallel storylines each separated by several centuries: (1) A contemporary melodrama of crime and redemption; (2) a Judean story: Christ’s mission and death; (3) a French story: the events surrounding the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572; and (4) a Babylonian story: the fall of the Babylonian Empire to Persia in 539 BC.
Intolerance was made partly in response to criticism of Griffith's previous film, The Birth of a Nation (1915),[3] which was attacked by the NAACP and other groups as perpetuating racial stereotypes and glorifying the Ku Klux Klan.[4]
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This complex film consists of four distinct, but parallel, stories—intercut with increasing frequency as the film builds to a climax—that demonstrate mankind's persistent intolerance throughout the ages. The film sets up moral and psychological connections among the different stories. The timeline covers approximately 2,500 years:
Breaks between the differing time-periods are marked by the symbolic image of a mother rocking a cradle, representing the passing of generations. One of the unusual characteristics of the film is that many of the characters don't have names. Griffith wished them to be emblematic of human types. Thus, the central female character in the modern story is called The Dear One. Her young husband is called The Boy, and the leader of the local Mafia is called The Musketeer of the Slums. Critics and film theorists indicate these names show Griffith's sentimentalism, which was already hinted at in The Birth of a Nation, with names such as The Little Colonel.
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In order of appearance:
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Uncredited extras:
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Intolerance was a colossal undertaking featuring monumental sets, lavish period costumes, and more than 3,000 extras. Griffith began shooting the film with the Modern Story (originally titled "The Mother and the Law"), whose planning predated The Birth of a Nation, then greatly expanded it to include the other three parallel stories under the theme of intolerance.
Actual costs to produce Intolerance are unknown, but best estimates are close to $2 million (about $43 million today), an astronomical sum in 1916. The film was by far the most expensive made at that point. When the film became a flop at the box-office, the burden was so great that in 1918 Triangle Film Corporation was put up for sale.
A detailed account of the film’s production is told in William M. Drew's 1986 book D.W. Griffith's Intolerance: Its Genesis and Its Vision.[9]
Upon its initial release, Intolerance was a commercial failure. Intolerance has been called "the only film fugue".[10][11][12] Professor Theodore Huff, one of the leading film critics of the first half of the 20th century, stated that it was the only motion picture worthy of taking its place alongside Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, the masterpieces of Michelangelo, etc. as a separate work of art.[10]
The film was shown out of competition at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival.[13]
In 1989, Intolerance was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant," going in during the first year of voting.
In 2007, AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) ranked Intolerance at number 49 of 100 films. The film currently holds a 96% approval rating on the aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes.
Film critic David Thomson has written of the film's "self-destructive frenzy":
The cross-cutting, self-interrupting format is wearisome.... The sheer pretension is a roadblock, and one longs for the "Modern Story" to hold the screen.... [That story] is still very exciting in terms of its cross-cutting in the attempt to save the boy from the gallows. This episode is what Griffith did best: brilliant, modern suspense, geared up to rapidity — whenever Griffith let himself slow down he was yielding to bathos.... Anyone concerned with film history has to see Intolerance, and pass on.[14]
Intolerance and its unorthodox editing were enormously influential, particularly among European and Soviet filmmakers. Many of the numerous assistant directors Griffith employed in making the film — Erich von Stroheim, Tod Browning, Woody Van Dyke — went on to become important and noted Hollywood directors in the subsequent years.
The pictured set was featured in the video game LA Noire as a historical monument.
Intolerance is now in the public domain and there are currently four major versions of the film in circulation.
WARK PRODUCING CORPORATION, moving pictures, at 1,476
Broadway, has filed schedules in bankruptcy, with liabilities of $298,910,
unsecured claims and assets of $125,042, consisting of films, pictures,
prints, &c., $65,000; accounts $13,927 and deposits in banks $47,016.
Copyright on motion picture play, "Intolerance," is given as value unknown.
Among the creditors are D. W. Griffith, $84,334; D. W. Griffith, Inc. $975;
D. W. G. Corp., $60,230; H. E. Aitken, $8,136, and Norman Hall, $6,610.
There are other budget/public domain video and Digital Video Disc versions of this film released by different companies, each with varying degrees of picture quality depending on the source that was used. A majority of these released are of poor picture quality, but even the restored 35 millimeter versions exhibit considerable film damage.
The Internet Movie Database lists the standard running time as 163 minutes, which is the running length of the DVD released by "Public Domain Flicks". The Delta DVD released in Region 1 as Intolerance: A Sun Play of the Ages and in Region 2 as Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages clocks in at 167 minutes. The version available for free viewing on the Internet Movie Archive is listed as 176 minutes, and is presumably the Killiam restoration.
Cameraman Karl Brown remembered a scene with the various members of the Babylonian harem that featured full frontal nudity. He was barred from the set that day, apparently because he was so young. While there are several shots of slaves and harem girls throughout the film (which were shot by another director, without Griffith's involvement) the scene that Brown describes is not in any surviving versions.[16]
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