Cebalord Very best movie i ever watch

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Jazzy_san Intolerance (which can be seen perhaps partly as a response to accusations of perpetuating racial stereotypes and glorifying the Klu Klux Klan in Birth of Nations) is considered by many to be his masterpiece, and indeed the greatest film of the whole silent era. Griffiths mammoth film, also subtitled: "A Sun-Play of the Ages" and "Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages.", consists of four distinct but parallel stories that demonstrated mankind's intolerance during four different ages in world history. Intolerance was a colossal undertaking filled with monumental sets, lavish period costumes, and thousands of extras.

ElMaruecan82 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.

disinterested_spectator It is often said that this movie was not well-received at the time, because it was over three hours long, and because it jumped back and forth among four different stories from four different time periods. Well, what was true then is still true today. The only way this movie deserves praise is if we handicap it for when it was made.In watching this movie, it soon becomes clear that the intolerance referred to in the title is religious in nature, for in each of the four stories, it is religion that causes all the suffering (actually, in the fourth story, it is more a matter of women becoming morally righteous as they age and lose their looks). Oddly enough, after showing how much misery is caused by religion (or moral righteousness) for over two thousand years, at the end of the movie, the heavens open up and God's grace is shed on earth, right in the middle of a war, causing everyone to stop fighting and love one another. So, I guess religion is bad, but God is good. Except, you have to wonder, what was God waiting for? If he was going to intervene and stop all the religious killing, he could have done that a long time ago.In three of the stories, good people die, but in the fourth story, set in modern times, the innocent man about to be hanged is saved by a melodramatic, last-minute confession from the real murderer. The reason for the difference is inexplicable. There is no indication that progress has been made over the centuries, for religious or moral intolerance is depicted as being just as prevalent today as in the past. If the innocent man had been hanged, that would at least have provided artistic unity for the four stories. As it is, the man's reprieve is capricious. D. W. Griffith probably figured the audience deserved at least one happy ending, especially since no one was going to believe that business about God's belated intervention.

Al_The_Strange Almost a century ago, D.W. Griffith produced this mammoth film as his follow-up to Birth of a Nation, partly to try and be bigger and better, and also to counteract the racial criticisms his previous film garnered. Intolerance is a massive production that spans thousands of years of human history. For the first time in cinema history, massive sets, massive amounts of extras, huge amounts of props and costumes were dispensed to craft a lavish and visual experience. To this day, many folks acknowledge this film as an important landmark of movie-making history.Regardless, it is one long-winded film that runs for three hours, telling four different stories in four different eras. The most interesting and visually impressive story involves the fall of ancient Babylon; it's a brutal tale that boasts some surprisingly violent scenes of war, with the backdrop of massive and exotic setpieces. The film also flips around with the classic tale of Jesus and His crucifixion, and once again it looks fabulous. Scenes in 16th century France show the story of St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. Then there's the modern day scenes (1916 that is) showing the struggle of the working class against the adversities of strike, strife, crime, and punishment. All these stories are united with the recurring image of a baby in a cradle, insinuating that the central theme of "intolerance" is a universal trait that carries on with each new generation, from the day we're born to the day we die.All that being said, the film never really captivated me. Not even with the lavish visuals, the sumptuous set designs, and the expansive story; as grand of an effort as this film was, I found it to be dry and stiff. None of the stories had any strong characters to follow, and without a pathological attachment, I found myself disconnected to the events that unfolded. The matter is made worse by the fact that all conflict seems historical in nature - most of them revolve around religious differences that set two sides at each others throats. Personal conflict occurs in the modern story, but is still not all that interesting. Thus, I found myself not really caring for what was going on, and the film overall came off as a bore.I am sorry to say such a thing, because the film clearly shows its quality and passion through its production. It boasts very solid, if not groundbreaking and impressive, photography and editing. Acting is generally good, even by silent-era standards. Title cards tend to be long-winded, and have a tendency to explain a lot of what's going on in a herky-jerky manner. This production spared no expense on the sets, props, and costumes Intolerance is an important landmark film that all serious film fans should attempt to see. It doesn't do much for me personally, I'm afraid, but it is best seen for its ambition, scope, scale, and overall quality and craftsmanship.3/5 (Entertainment: Awful | Story: Average | Film: Very Good)