‎Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916) directed by D.W. Griffith • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd

Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages

1916 Directed by D.W. Griffith

The Cruel Hand of Intolerance

The story of a poor young woman, separated by prejudice from her husband and baby, is interwoven with tales of intolerance from throughout history.

Lillian Gish Mae Marsh Robert Harron F.A. Turner Sam De Grasse Vera Lewis Lillian Langdon Olga Grey Erich von Ritzau Bessie Love Margery Wilson Eugene Pallette Spottiswoode Aitken Ruth Handforth Elmer Clifton Seena Owen Carl Stockdale Mary Alden Pearl Elmore Julia Mackley Miriam Cooper Walter Long Tom Wilson Ralph Lewis Lloyd Ingraham John P. McCarthy Monte Blue Marguerite Marsh Edward Dillon Show All…

197 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Tony the Terror😼 ★★ 473

AFI Top 52 Project - #49

Yeah, I just couldn’t get into this at all. I knew going in it was going to be a tough watch (a 3 hour silent film are you kidding me with this shit?!) but the way the separate stories were interwoven made it even harder to keep up with what was going on. I will say that the sets were truly impressive things of exquisite beauty. It just seems like some of that incredible detail should have gone into the editing.

Supposedly Griffith made this as a sort of atonement for the blatantly racist Birth of a Nation, but if you’re replacing racism with a hefty dose of misogyny then you’re really not doing any better at all now are you.

Side Note: What’s up with that creepy looking poster trying to make this look like an enticing horror movie about a baby snatching ghost/demon? Spoiler alert: it’s a trap.
Review by Jaime Rebanal ★★★★★ 4

Intolerance, burning and slaying. Intolerance is D. W. Griffith's response to the condemnations he had received in regards to The Birth of a Nation, which has over the years been criticized for its racist overtones yet also praised for its technological innovations for film history (it's a case in which I admire the film more than I like it). As for D. W. Griffith's Intolerance, I feel as if what Griffith is leaving behind made me rethink what I had perceived of him after The Birth of a Nation, because Intolerance goes ahead and speaks out against how closed-minded society's viewpoints may be, within all eras, age groups, and races. It's a film that is already a century old, and…
Review by Edgar Cochran ★★★★★ 10

***One of the best 150 films I have ever seen.***

Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages... Oh, what a glorious and tear-inducing cinematographic creation was born almost a century ago. Oh, what a compelling and self-reflexive drama of epic proportions gave cinema an outstanding respect. Oh, what a sophisticated and groundbreaking epitome of the strong emotional connection existent between love and several forms of intolerance Griffith attempted to create. Oh, what a faithful representation of different eras of human history making love until the cataclysmic final explosion ensues an inevitable, yet truthful conclusion about the decaying of the human race due to its imaginary vainglory. Oh, what an audacious depiction of violence contrasted with evil intentions and the lack of…
Review by Neil Bahadur ★★★★★ 14

If the cinematic experience is one that only unfolds in the present, then Intolerance takes four different periods of history which have existed in linear time and places them within a span of simultaneity - this can only be done through cinematic means. It's one of the purest examples of Kubrick's dictum that it is editing which makes cinema distinct from other art forms. Better analysis in the other write-up I did - but I think the last 40 mins are maybe unparalleled: no Manchiean dualisms - we rip through space and time through each cut, but because of the thematic linkage, each juxtaposition builds a new idea out of the last, even as the speed increases. It's the moment where narrative montage develops into what will become theoretical montage. We should be glad we're lucky enough that something this sophisticated can also be the most ambitious motion picture ever made.
Review by Glenn Kenny ★★★★★ 1

The Cohen Films restoration is absolutely remarkable and the nearly 100-year-old film plays as relentlessly MODERN. If you think you know this picture but haven't seen it in a while, check it out again, it is AMAZING.
Review by Neil Bahadur ★★★★★

With the possible exception of True Heart Susie, Griffith's non-formal ideas never progressed past Victorian melodrama. So most of the ideas parlayed within the actual narratives of Intolerance are often precariously simple tales of heroes and villains - with the exception of the "Mother and the Law" sequence. Being that this section of the film was intended originally as a stand-alone feature (and eventually released as so with added footage in 1919) it makes sense that it's the only one which has any serious emotional impact within the individual segments it is chopped up into. However, this is not 'The Mother and the Law,' nor 'The Fall of Babylon,' but a film made of four stories which begin and end…

Recent reviews

Review by comrade_yui ★★★★

why does the TWO SWORD MAN only have ONE SWORD
Review by Edward R Fernandez ★★★★★

One of the greatest achievements in early filmmaking. The film that took the movies to an artform. ..end of
Review by jonrock508 ★★½

So I’m pretty sure that I might not just be a fan of Griffith, which is a disappointing start to this whole endeavor. This movie was a slog to get through, and honestly it’s sad that it was, because it definitely had potential. A movie juggling four different stories, across multiple time periods, sounds like it would be right up my alley, but alas it was not. I also feel that I should, once again, clear up a misunderstanding of this movie. The film was made not because Griffith realized Birth Of A Nation was racist intolerance crap, but because he thought the claims of racism themselves were intolerance towards him, so he’s a bit of a fuck anyway.

The…
Review by Darío Delgado ★★★★★

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Review by Aleksander 알렉산더

A true epic if I ever saw one.
Review by giantroot ★★★★★

불관용에 저항하는 영화에서 본인이 불관용을 외치다니 이 무슨 모에캐스러운...라고 드립치고 싶어도 미장센과 시나리오, 프로덕션 퀄리티가 굉장해서 결국 경배하게 만든다
Review by Aiva ★★★★

Babilonas skati pārspēj Gredzenu pavēlniekus, turklāt bez jebkādiem datorefektiem!
Review by Daniel Slack 1

If D.W Griffith made Intolerance in 2016 instead of 1916, Hollywood would never bother with Michael Bay again. What that specifically implies, I'm not sure, but my gut tells me I'm right.

Intolerance is D.W Griffith's epic masterpiece, one that entirely overshadows The Birth Of A Nation--even if only judged technically (morality aside). Birth is a boring melodrama with two extended action set-pieces. Close-ups, camera movement, gargantuan sets, innumerable extras, cross cutting--you cannot find them in Griffith's 1915 effort if one judges such things by the standards of his 1916 triumph. Intolerance is a truly epic explosion of a new-found HUGE CINEMA; a mountain that was quickly sighted in the late 1800s, one that the Italians began to climb after 1909, one that Griffith summits with Intolerance. Again; a masterpiece, maybe cinema's earliest.
Review by trapezeman ★★★★★

griffith did that