I saw a four hour, ten minute version of this as the University of Chicago's Ida Noyes Hall in February, 1993 -- restored with stills and copyright photos, with a new score by Gillian Anderson, featuring the composer conducting the University Symphony Orchestra -- what an experience!

And where, oh where, is this restored version to be seen today?

Somebody get on the copyright owner's case to release the 4:10 version, with Gillian Anderson's score!

This fine film, possibly the quintessential Griffith, has been in the shadow of the notorious Birth of a Nation too long. (Of course, without Birth of a Nation's controversy, this might never have been made). Intolerance has more spectacle than Birth, far more "speaking" parts (if that's not an oxymoron, I don't know what is!), and is far more PC -- but not in a negative way.

See it, in any form you can!

Four storylines are followed. The first is set in the modern world, where The Dear One (Mae Marsh) and her beloved The Boy (Bobby Harron) are struggling to survive. He loses his job due to union striking after a pay cut mandated so that the company boss can fund his sister's charity work. That same charity takes away the Dear One's child, citing neglect, as the Boy is sent to jail after resorting to crime.

The Biblical "Judean" story recounts how intolerance led to the crucifixion of Jesus. This sequence is the shortest of the four.

The third story details the events of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of 1572 where Huguenot protestants were killed under orders of the Catholic royalty.

The fourth story is set in ancient Babylon, and deals with a religious struggle between different sects that leads to their conquest by the Persians.

Griffith's masterpiece is a marvel of narrative and structural complexity for the time, and the Babylon scenes are truly awe-inspiring in their scope and ambition. The story, in which instances of "intolerance" are illustrated throughout the ages, is a bit muddled and more than a little pretentious, but the visualization is second-to-none.

It's been put forth that Griffith made this as a sort of apologia for the racial insensitivity of his previous mega-hit The Birth of a Nation, but Griffith scholars disagree, and say that Griffith was never ashamed by the racist nature of his last movie, and that the intolerance that he was speaking out against was that which had been directed at him over that film (shades of our current political climate).

Regardless, this ended up being the most expensive film ever made up to that point, and was a major flop at the box office, from which Griffith never really recovered. The film now stands as a colossal achievement, and a precursor to historical epics to come. There are various versions in circulation.

It's very hard to review INTOLERANCE today, as the film is so old fashioned that even comparing it to films made just a decade later is a problem. When it debuted in 1916, it was a technical masterpiece due to D. W. Griffith's insane spending habits--with the millions he sank into the film with these extraordinary sets, it couldn't help but knock the socks off the audience. The film featured live elephants (plus a few papier mache ones that were well camouflaged), thousands of extras and sets that even by today's standards are amazing. The huge walls of Babylon and the enormous statues are NOT matte paintings but were actually built for this amazing film. The problem, though, is that although people DID come to see the film, they never came in large enough numbers to recoup production costs and it was a huge box office failure. I think part of this might have been because while the film was beautiful to look at, the narrative was very confused (being made up of four separate films inter-spliced together) as well as extremely preachy AND sexy (now THAT's a unique combination).

A lot of these problems could have been avoided by simply making four separate films--or at least filming one or two of the best sequences only. Plus, two of the sequences (the story of Jesus and the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre) seemed too choppy and incomplete--like they were more afterthoughts of Griffith. The two remaining sequences, the Babylonian and the one set in 1916 had much more merit. While the Babylonian one was pretty silly in many ways, it was by far the most visually appealing and just overwhelms the viewer. The 1916 sequence had simple contemporary sets and had an excellent story that paralleled the stingy Puritanism of John D. Rockefeller--and this alone would have made an excellent film. But when all the films were combined with their tenuous and schmaltzy message, the overall picture really bogged down and is almost laughably bad in spots. What I particularly found interesting were scenes with Jesus appearing along with some very, very risqué scenes of practically naked dancing girls from Babylon! What this film DESPERATELY needed was a producer--not D. W. Griffith tossing in everything but the proverbial kitchen sink into an overblown mega-picture that couldn't help but fail.