Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

not horrible nor great

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

In 1915, D.W. Griffith's gave birth to modern cinema with "The Birth of a Nation", a giant leap that proved the remaining skeptics that the 20th century wouldn't do without the reel, that there was a time for Chaplin's gesticulations and a time for serious storytelling. Of course, Chaplin's contribution is more valuable because he understood the universality of cinema more than any other filmmaker, let alone Griffith who made his film culminate with the glorification of the KKK. ¨People from all over the world would rather relate to the little tramp than any Griffith's character, but as I said in my "Birth of a Nation" review, without that seminal film, there wouldn't even be movies to contradict it.And D.W. Griffith was actually the first to do so by making a humanistic anthology named "Intolerance: Love's Struggle Through the Ages", a three-hour epic relating four separate stories set at different historical times, but all converging toward the same hymn to intolerance, or denunciation of intolerance's effect through four major storylines: the fall of Babylon, the crucifixion of the Christ, the Bartholomew Day massacre and a contemporary tale with odd modern resonances. The four stories overlap throughout the film, punctuated with the same leitmotif of a mother "endless rocking the cradle", as to suggest the timeless and universal importance of the film. The mother is played by an unrecognizable Lillian Gish but it's not exactly a film that invites you to admire acting, the project is so big, so ambitious on a simple intellectual level that it transcends every cinematic notion. It is really a unique case described as the only cinematic fugue (a word used for music), one of these films so dizzying in their grandeur that you want to focus on the achievements rather than the shortcomings, just like "Gone With the Wind" or more recently "Avatar". Each of the four stories would have been great and cinematically appealing in its own right, Griffith dares to tell the four of them using his trademark instinct for editing. Technically, it works.And while I'm not surprised that he could pull such a stunt since he had already pushed the envelope in 1915, bmaking this "Intolerance" only one year after "The Birth of Nation" is baffling, especially since it was meant as an answer to the backlash he suffered from, it's obvious it wasn't pre-planned, so how he could make this in less than a year is extraordinary. I can't imagine how he got all these extras (three thousands), the recreations of ancient Babylon, of 16th century France, and still have time for a real story, but maybe that's revealing how eager he was to show that he wasn't the bigoted monster everyone accused him of, as if the scale of his sincerity had to be measured in terms of cinematic zeal. That the film flopped can even play as a sort of redemption in Griffith's professional arc.But after the first hour, we kind of get the big picture and we understand that Griffith tells it like he means it. It works so well that the American Film Institute replaced the "Birth of a Nation" from the AFI Top 100 with "Intolerance" in the 10th anniversary update. But after watching the two of them, I believe they both belonged to the list as they're the two ideological sides of the same coin. But if one had to be kept, it would be the infamous rather than the famous, if only because the former is more 'enjoyable' in the sense that there's never a dull moment where you feel tempted to skip to another part. "Intolerance" had one titular key word: struggle, I struggled to get to the end, and even then, I had to watch it again because I couldn't stay focused. Indeed, what a challenging movie patience-wise!This is a real orgy of set decorations that kind of loses its appeal near the second act, and while the first modern story is interesting because you can tell Griffith wanted to highlight the hypocrisy of our world's virtue posers, who try to make up for the very troubles they cause and use money for the most lamentable schemes, it might be too demanding to plug your mind to so many different stories. And when the climax starts with its collection of outbursts of violence, I felt grateful for finally rewarding my patience than enjoying the thrills themselves, especially since it doesn't hold up as well as the climactic sequence of "The Birth of a Nation". Or maybe we lost the attention span when it comes to silent movies, but there must be a reason the film flopped even at its time, maybe the abundance of notes and cardboards that makes the film look like a literary more than visual experience?I guess "Intolerance" can be enjoyed sequence by sequence, by making as many halts as possible in that epic journey, but it's difficult to render a negative judgment for such a heavy loaded film. For my part, I'm glad I could finally watch and review all the movies from the American Film Institute's Top 100 and I appreciate its personal aspect in Griffith's career. Perhaps what the film does the best is to say more about the man than the director. His insistence on never giving names to his characters ("The Boy", "The Dear Guy"...) calling a mobster a "Musketeer" and all that vocabulary reveal his traditional and sentimental view of America, and maybe the rest of the world. That's might be Griffith's more ironic trait, so modern on the field of technical film-making yet so old-fashioned in his vision, he's one hell of a storyteller and he handles the universal and historical approach of his film like a master, but when it comes to his personal vision, he struck me as the illustration of his own metaphor, like a good mother-figure endlessly rocking our cradle.

In terms costume, design, and size of action, this Griffith epic is rightly considered one of the towering films in cinema's history, for it is a marvel to look at for an audience of any era - with the re-construction of Babylonian sets including towering walls, carved sculptures, and chariots, as the backdrop to religious worship and army sieges. It conjures up all number of memorable images and features a range of impressive technical feats - such as dolly's and what look like crane shots, as well as many close ups - which were very rare for the time.Unfortunately however not nearly as much talent went into the script as the production. It attempts to tell four stories from four different eras and places in history, united by a single theme - that intolerance is bad. The problem is however, the film tells us this in opening title cards before the thing has even started, so that watching this film is not a journey of wonder and discovery and mystery and surprise, but the journey of watching a wealthy group of people make their point in a scripted way with re-creations of history that contain inaccuracies. On top of this, two of the four stories seem to just fall by the wayside and be largely forgotten about. It feels less like a fiction film than a documentary re-enactment, the purpose of which is to provide a moral which everybody understands to be true before they enter the theatre to watch this film anyway. The problem with corruption in politics and religion and wealth in our world, and through the ages, is not that people don't understand morals, it's that they don't act upon them for selfish reasons. This film just uses morals to try and leverage some gravitas. Well, it could have been told in half the time at least! It could have been told in ten minutes! They told it in the first few title cards! The acting is fairly poor throughout, without any suspense the plot really drags, and relies heavily on title cards to progress the pretty pictures, but ironically it is the most modern story, the one with the least impressive set and costume visuals, that is the most affecting, as they choose not to provide a history re-enactment, but set a story of twists and turns in motion, melodramatic as they are.Wikipedia will try to tell us "it has been called the first art film" - but that's rubbish, because all film is art, and Melies, to list just one, was there before Griffith, and Griffith himself made better art before this anyway. In my opinion this is the kind of film that will inspire more blockbusters than unique stories.

'Intolerance' is most definitely the best film by great innovator D.W. Griffith. And it was only possible because of his revoltingly racist 'The Birth of a Nation'. With more lavishing sets and extravagant battle scenes 'Intolerance' was unfortunately that expensive that it caused movie studio to go bankrupt.'Intolerance' was epic in many levels – it was technically superb, it's four parallel cross-cutting stories from different eras and again masterful (and quite gory, we don't see that many heads been cut off even in much newer movies) battle scenes. Each of them four stories could have been good film, but Griffith decided to connect them all with one theme – Intolerance. The connecting scenes with Lilian Gish as The Eternal Motherhood rocking the cradle of love was nice symbolic touch, and Griffith loved symbolism. 'Intolerance' is one of the best films about injustice, betrayal, and of course love, ever made. Griffith's visual style almost makes it a poem on celluloid.This film is awesome for one more reason – it has very strong female hero. In the Ancient Babylonian story The Mountain Girl played magnificent Constance Talmadge.*Quote from the film.

There's a misconception surrounding INTOLERANCE, which states that DW Griffith made this movie in order to retract or apologize for the racism in BIRTH OF A NATION. This is not the case; in fact, much of the driving concept behind INTOLERANCE is Griffith's desire to assert his freedom of speech. Griffith tells four separate stories, at different points in man's history, that deal with the consequences of intolerance and repression. Here's my review.SCRIPT: The modern story (set in 1916 in a nameless American city) is by far the most emotionally involving. It revolves around the plight of a young mother whose baby is taken by interfering reformers, and her husband who is unjustly accused of murder. The Babylon story shows a rather tenuous grasp of history, affirming that treachery and religious intolerance was the reason for Babylon's downfall; however, it does present us with the Mountain Girl, who could rightly be called the first female action hero. The Christ story is really just used as kind of a commentary on what's happening in the previous two stories, using the apocryphal account which states "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" (actually, this wasn't in the original writings), and the Huguenot story of religious persecution isn't really developed enough to be interesting, at least from what surviving footage we have (difficult to judge since there are so many versions available.) His grasp on what actually constitutes intolerance is rather shaky, affirming that intolerance is the reason for the troubles of the Dear One and the Boy in the modern story. Still, one central story would have allowed Griffith to more clearly develop his ideas – but juggling four at one time with this strained idea of intolerance results in something of a jumble. SCORE: 5.5/10 ACTING: There are at least three standout performances here. Constance Talmadge is wonderful as the Mountain Girl – charismatic, comedic, and lots of fun. Miriam Cooper delivers a soulful and restrained, modern performance as the Friendless One in the modern story, and Robert Harron is compelling in an understated way as the Boy, very naturalistic and expressive. Mae Marsh's performance as the Dear One was a mixed bag to me. Her incessant hypercaffeinated jumping around in the first part of the modern story got on my nerves (although this is likely Griffith's fault – Mary Pickford states that Griffith liked his heroines to behave this way and Pickford refused to do so). Once her character matures and settles down, though, her performance improves notably – her eyes are particularly demonstrative and vivid. As for other performers, Margery Wilson shows potential as Brown Eyes but doesn't get much of a chance to make an impression, and much of the acting in the historical segments falls into the stagy, overly emphatic style of the time. And there's A LOT of that, unfortunately. SCORE: 9 for Talmadge, Harron and Cooper, 7 for Mae Marsh, Margery Wilson, and the people in the modern story, and about 4 for everyone else. 6.5/10 CINEMATOGRAPHY/PRODUCTION: This is where the movie excels. There are some revolutionary shots and techniques here, most notably in the Babylon story, with the famous shot that descends upon the gate of Babylon. Visually, the film is marvelous, with tracking and panning, shots, close ups, and abundant use of tinting (of course, this depends on which print you watch. I watched the Kino version, which is available on Netflix's streaming service). The sets in the Babylon story are massive and exquisitely well photographed. You get bird's eye views of the scenery of Babylon, exciting shots in the modern story with the car chasing the train, and some beautifully illustrated title cards. Griffith's command of editing and cinematography compensate somewhat for the ideological weaknesses of the script. SCORE: 10/10 SUMMARY: INTOLERANCE is a very mixed bag. It does have fascinating moments and stunning cinematography and production. Some of the performances are outstanding, and some are rather dated. However, it does have historical inaccuracies. Perhaps its greatest flaw is that it ultimately bites off more than it can chew and doesn't really make its case against intolerance as strongly as it hopes because its concept of intolerance is very vague. It's also VERY long and probably more for film buffs than casual viewers. It has great moments, but perhaps just as many not-so-great ones. SCORE: 7/10