Popular reviews

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  Review by 1313: Tony the Terror🌨️ ★★ 443

  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…

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  Review by Jaime Rebanal ★★★★★ 2

  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. 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 it is so ahead of its own time, it cannot be remade today no…

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  Review by Edgar Cochran ★★★★★ 19

  ***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…

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  Review by Will Sloan 2

  And with that, my biggest and most embarrassing film-history blind spot has finally been addressed.

  Certain scenes in this have still basically never been surpassed, so respect. I am simply not used to seeing this many people crammed into this many planes of a cinematic frame, all doing some bit of choreographed motion. The way Griffith structured the four parallel stories is also an impressive feat of architecture, although I'm not fully persuaded by the parallels between the crucifixion of Christ and, say, The Boy in modern times being sentenced to death.

  It's very funny that D.W. Griffith was so stung by pushback to Birth of a Nation's racial politics that he responded with a three-hour epic about how intolerance…

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  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…

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  Review by Neil Bahadur ★★★★★

  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.

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  Review by Stephen Gillespie ★★ 9

  It can't be a review of Intolerance without mentioning how stunning the siege of Babylon is. It is stunning. It is one of many staggering sequences in the film that fill the screen with gargantuan stuff, you sit back in awe. Some of the cross cutting is also hugely exciting.

  Of course, there's the rest of the movie. The moments of sheer spectacle are hurt by a wider context and don't ever really map together. This four stories in one setup feels deeply haphazard. The connective issue is some vague handwaving about 'Intolerance'. It is a film built directly around a theme, that is the connection and how it comes together. What does intolerance mean in this context? Kind of…

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  Review by Justin Peterson ★★★

  D.W. Griffith's epic portrayal of love's battle against hatred throughout the ages.

  "Intolerance, burning and slaying."

  Following along with the plot of a silent movie can be a challenge, but with Intolerance we get to try keeping up with and staying invested in 4 different storylines that they keep switching between throughout for nearly three hours. This was a chore to get through to say the least, but thankfully the film does reward you with some spectacular moments for sticking with it until the end.

  (Quick Hits) ... Spoilers:

  - Easily the fall of the Babylonian Empire is the best part of Intolerance. The grand scale of the set design, costumes, and battles is remarkable for a movie made more…

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  Review by Lencho of the Apes ★★½ 6

  Not. Even. The Europeans were so far ahead of this in 1916 it isn't even funny -- even their unambitious weekly-program pop-movies, sometimes. The better ones. All it has going for it is the big-ass sets and that assembly-line crosscutting, a mechanical process for creating meaning... but those are pretty American qualities, so it could be that's why it's been preeminent in the history books.

  I guess I'll watch the alternate cut of The Mother And The Law one of these days, cuz that's the only part of this that made any impression at all.

  PS: There's a thematic thread unifying the four unconnected stories? Really? Only feebly there, I hardly even noticed it ever. Thinking this is ahistorical, and…

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  Review by Paul Elliott ★★★★★ 1

  Intolerance, D. W. Griffith's silent era classic, is definitely a movie that has stood the test of time, and although it can't quite keep up with the flashiness of modern cinema, it has the power to captivate an audience with its powerful message and innovative direction. The story, which follows  several distinct storylines across the ages, draws attention to the difficulties faced by those who have faced discrimination and oppression through the ages, and Griffith's masterful direction binds these stories together wonderfully. He crafts one of the most iconic sequences ever, with a series of scene cuts between periods, to show how history keeps repeating itself. The visuals and cinematography also have to be applauded, as the scenes really pull you into…

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  Review by Evan T ★★★★

  To think Intolerance is 105 years-old might just be the most mystifying fact of the movies, even when considering its religiously overwrought presentation. Overruling some mildly offensive appropriation, unlike The Birth of a Nation, Griffith’s next feature isn’t besmirched by the same deplorable racism and insidious sympathy for the confederacy, allowing modern audiences to watch it without feeling sick to their stomachs by the time it reaches its conclusion. Alongside Birth, it establishes Griffith as the first true action filmmaker — a title birthed out of a 3-hour spectacle of fire and blood, with some 3,000 extras in tow. It’s the inception of the cinematic language as we now know it; the inconceivable budget, the use of the closeup for…

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  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.