| Intolerance | |
| Director: | D. W. Griffith |
| Producer: | D. W. Griffith |
| Starring: | Vera Lewis Ralph Lewis Mae Marsh Robert Harron Constance Talmadge Lillian Gish Josephine Crowell Margery Wilson Frank Bennett Elmer Clifton Miriam Cooper Alfred Paget |
| Music: | Joseph Carl Breil Julián Carrillo Carl Davis (for 1989 restoration) |
| Cinematography: | Billy Bitzer |
| Editing: | D. W. Griffith James Smith Rose Smith |
| Distributor: | Triangle Distributing Corporation |
| Runtime: | 210 minutes (original release) 197 minutes (most surviving cuts) |
| Language: | Silent (English intertitles) |
| Country: | United States |
| Budget: | $385,907 |
| Gross: | $1.75 million |
Intolerance is a 1916 epic silent film directed by D. W. Griffith. Subtitles include Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages and A Sun-Play of the Ages.[1]
Regarded as one of the most influential films of the silent era (though it received mixed reviews at the time), the three-and-a-half-hour epic intercuts four parallel storylines, each separated by several centuries: first, a contemporary melodrama of crime and redemption; second, a Judean story: Christ's mission and death; third, a French story: the events surrounding the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572; and fourth, a Babylonian story: the fall of the Babylonian Empire to Persia in 539 BC. Each story had its own distinctive color tint in the original print. The scenes are linked by shots of a figure representing Eternal Motherhood, rocking a cradle.
Griffith chose to explore the theme of intolerance partly in response to his previous film The Birth of a Nation (1915) being derided by the NAACP and others for perpetuating and supporting racial stereotypes and glorifying the Ku Klux Klan. Intolerance was not, however, an apology, as Griffith felt he had nothing to apologize for; in numerous interviews, Griffith made clear that the film was a rebuttal to his critics and he felt that they were, in fact, the intolerant ones. In the years following its release, Intolerance strongly influenced European film movements. In 1958, the film was voted number 7 on the Brussels 12 list at the 1958 World Expo. In 1989, it was one of the first films to be selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
The 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 timeline covers approximately 2,500 years.
Breaks between differing time periods are marked by the symbolic image of a mother rocking a cradle, representing the passing of generations. The film simultaneously cross-cuts back and forth and interweaves the segments over great gaps of space and time, with over 50 transitions between the segments. One of the unusual characteristics of the film is that many of the characters do not 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 maintain that these names reveal Griffith's sentimentalism, which was already hinted at in The Birth of a Nation, with names such as The Little Colonel.
The American "Modern" story
Renaissance "French" story (1572)
Ancient "Babylonian" story
The Biblical "Judean" story
Cameo appearances/small roles
Intolerance was a colossal undertaking featuring monumental sets, lavish period costumes, and more than 3,000 extras. The lot on Sunset Boulevard featured a Babylon set with 300feet tall walls as well as streets of Judea and medieval France. The total payroll for extras was reported to have reached $12,000 daily.[3] Griffith began shooting the film with the Modern Story (originally titled "The Mother and the Law"), whose planning predated the great commercial success of The Birth of a Nation. He then greatly expanded it to include the other three parallel stories under the theme of intolerance. Three hundred thousand feet of film were shot.
The total cost of producing Intolerance was reported to be close to $2 million including $250,000 for the Belshazzar feast scene alone, an astronomical sum in 1916, but accounts for the film show the exact cost to be $385,906.77.[4] A third of the budget went into making the Babylonian segments of the film.
Intolerance was met with an enthusiastic reception from film critics upon its premiere.[5] Scholar Frank Beaver argues that "Griffith's intended message in Intolerance was not lost on reviewers", noting that in The San Francisco Bulletin a contemporary critic declared, "Griffith's film comes powerfully to strengthen the hand of the believers in love."[6] Although Intolerance was a commercial failure upon its initial release, it has since received very positive reviews and later gained popularity. It has been called "the only film fugue". Theodore Huff, one of the leading film critics of the first half of the 20th century, believed that it was the only motion picture worthy of taking its place alongside Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling paintings, etc., as a separate and central artistic contribution.
Intolerance was shown out of competition at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival. In 1989, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", the first year of voting.[7] In 2007, AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) ranked Intolerance as the 49th best American film of all time.
Pauline Kael considered Intolerance the greatest film ever made: "Intolerance is one of the two or three most influential movies ever made, and I think it is also the greatest."[8] Half-a-century later, Armond White concurs, writing, "A century later we are as close to its subject as we are distant from its art."[9]
Praise for the work is not unanimous, however. David Thomson argued that the film's impact is weakened by its "self-destructive frenzy":
The film has been widely reported to have been a box office bomb, but this is a myth attributed to its misreported budget. Even though up to that time it was the most expensive American film made and grossed far less than The Birth of a Nation, it earned approximately $1.75 million for its backers, a respectable performance and enough to recoup its budget.[10] [11]
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 subsequent years.
The film was parodied by Buster Keaton in Three Ages (1923).
In 1954, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art held a screening of the 1916 film, with organist Vernon Geyer performing the original score.[12]
Intolerances "Babylon" set is a feature location in the 2011 video game L.A. Noire, even though the game is set in 1947 and the Babylon set was torn down before this date.[13]
Intolerance is now in the public domain. There are currently four major versions of the film in circulation on home video.
A further extensive 1989 restoration was a collaboration between silent film composer-conductor Gillian Anderson, the Museum of Modern Art and the Library of Congress. It is somewhat controversial but perhaps the most accurate to date; however, it is unavailable on home video.[14] [15]
There are other budget/public domain video and DVD versions of this film released by different companies, each with varying degrees of picture quality depending on the source that was used. Most 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 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.
It is also known that a major segment of the Renaissance "French" story, involving the attempted assassination of the Admiral Coligny, was cut before the film's release.
Film historian Kevin Brownlow has written that, when Griffith re-released "The Modern Story" separately as The Mother and the Law in 1919, he softened in the film, due to the First Red Scare that year. "He was obliged to put this title in the strike sequence: 'The militiamen having used blank cartridges, the workmen now fear only the company guards. In fact, "machine guns could not operate with blank cartridges at this period", Brownlow noted.