Pluskylang Great Film overall

Infamousta brilliant actors, brilliant editing

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

statesofunrest This was an excellent film, though I think the version I watched was a shortened version (the one that anyone can watch on YouTube, coming in at 2 hours and 45 minutes or around there). It was a very good watch though I thought. Hugely entertaining and a terrific score to boot. It's not just a good silent film, but a great film in general. The only thing I didn't like was the Jesus story, not that I have anything against the person, just it felt like it was somewhat lacking and didn't really serve any purpose to the rest of the film. Also, everyone knows the Jesus story and it doesn't really help the movie to reiterate here what everyone already knows. Outside of that, I really liked everything else in the movie. Truly an epic picture, the battle scenes especially are top notch for its time. It's really too bad that this movie ended up bankrupting one of the greatest directors of all time, but really, what a film, for its time or any other.

SnoopyStyle Four intolerance stories take place throughout history. In 539 BC Babylon, a poor mountain girl is being married off but there are no takers. New young king Belshazzar gives her the freedom to marry or not to marry. Meanwhile religious conflict and a battle against the Persian Cyrus lead the city to ruin. In the second story, the hypocritical Pharisees condemn Jesus Christ who defended an adulterous woman. In 1572 Paris, intolerance leads to the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of the Protestant Huguenots by Catholic royals. Then in present-day America, busy body social charity women get money from a spinster who then needs to cut worker's wages. The workers strike leads to a violent confrontation. A young woman escapes the situation to the city. She is courted by a petty criminal and he tries to quit his gang. He gets framed in retaliation. While he's in prison, she struggles and the same social charity takes away her baby.The Babylon set is gigantic and the battle is epic. That story is a whole movie by itself. It is compelling and the mountain girl is a great device. The Jesus story is perfunctory. The French sets are almost as grand as Babylon but the story lacks any drama. The modern story is the most written. The circular story feels manufactured and fake. D.W. Griffith cross-cuts these four stories to make a point but it doesn't come across that well. This would be better off as separate movies. The Babylon movie would be amazing and the modern movie could be interesting. The combining of the four simply leaves this feeling overly long.

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.

Applause Meter D.W. Griffith has bestowed on 21st century viewers a visually engaging historical artifact. The film is largely incoherent and ultimately lacks cohesion in its attempt to incorporate so many historical parallels. The four-hour extravaganza is a spectacle of excess in its every aspect. Of course it is critical to recognize that this film dates to 1916, predating the "modern era." Like most of the films from the early silent period, it's permeated with Victorian sensibility, and a puritan morality. Almost 100 years on, this makes for story lines reflecting a collective societal naiveté. Watching such a lengthy, moralizing melodrama is a tedious, wearying experience. I give it a "5" as an important example in the trajectory of the development of the movie industry both as popular entertainment and art form.