Cinema
Intolerance
D. W. Griffith · 1916
Synopsis
Four eras, linked by the image of a woman rocking a cradle. In Babylon, in 539 BCE, the high priest of Bel betrays King Belshazzar in favour of Cyrus. In Judea, Christ preaches, from the wedding at Cana to the adulterous woman. In Paris, in 1572, Catherine de' Medici pushes Charles IX towards the St Bartholomew's Day massacre. In a contemporary American city, an employer cuts wages to fund his sister's charities; the strike is crushed with machine guns, a young worker is accused of a murder he did not commit, and a vice league takes his wife's child away.
Context
Its author undertook it in response to the criticisms raised by his previous film. The Babylon set, with walls some thirty metres high according to the AFI, remained standing for three years on a Hollywood lot, for lack of money to demolish it, before the fire department had it razed in 1919. The film cost about 386,000 dollars, more than any American film before it; a commercial disappointment, it long passed for a disaster that supposedly ruined Griffith, which several historians dispute. In the Soviet Union, Kuleshov had his students study it, and Eisenstein acknowledged a debt to it.
Who it is for
Silent film of nearly three hours, in four alternating stories. Copies differ in length and in tints; the 2013 restoration reproduces the original tints.
Prizes and reception
Inducted in 1989, in the first class, into the National Film Registry, and ranked forty-ninth on the AFI list in 2007.
Sources for this page 10
The pages consulted to check this page.