Intolerance Reviews

(OK) So dificcult to judge such effort so creative and intuitive in film language, and so conservative in everything else. The grandilocuence and the grandeur of sets are marched in a rare way...

At last, I finally saw this flick. I mean, it was on my queue for more than a year but I kept pushing it away because, let’s face it, to watch a 3 hours silent feature is a rather daunting prospect, at least to me. Eventually, I have to admit that it was quite impressive. I mean, it was a very ambitious production, no doubt it, and the production value was really amazing. Apparently, D.W. Griffith spent $2 million to make this flick which was a huge amount of money at the time and, apparently, even so, the audience were not really attracted by such a long movie so it wasn’t really a financial success after all. I must admit it, myself, I was quite intrigued during the 1rst hour but then, I had a hard time to focus until the end. Griffith basically mixed 4 stories, 3 around some historical events (the fall of Babylon, the crucifixion, the massacre of the St. Bartholomew's Day) and a contemporary fiction and the fact that he kept switching between all these tales made it even more difficult to hold on the whole thing. Still, it was very well directed, especially when you think that it is almost 100 years old. To conclude, even though I’m not a huge fan of those very long silent features, this one is a classic and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

I just finish watching D.W. Griffith's Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916) and of course it's message is about intolerance. What was so unbelievable about this movie is the size of the set and the battle scenes with needed more than 3,000 extras! In a year such as 1916 without having technology of computer effects.. it was astounding. The Babylonian set must have been so HUGE that horse chariots and elephants could move around. I came to know that the movie wasn't received well when it first released and having watching 4 different stories of 4 different eras cutting through each other within this movie and it being a silent movie didn't help either.. I can understand why but really, the mise-en-scene was spectacular and almost believably true as it tries to portray.

The movie consists of 4 stories of man's cruelty to man: the fall of Babylon, the crucifixion of Christ, the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre and the modern story of a man wrongly accused of murder. As magnificent as it is and sending strong messages, it was a tiring piece of movie for me to watch. I like the movie but I won't watch it again. (lol) Truthfully, there was times that I was tempted to push the FF button. In the supplement section, restoration works was shown and noted how much restoration work had to be done on the whole movie. This movie is one of the most expensive production in its era and it was this failed movie at the box-office that caused the studio to go bankrupt. The version I watched is The Killiam Shows Version. Did you know that the original running time was actually 8 hours? (o.0) OMG. While searching online, I found out that the detail of the film-making is explained in William M. Drew (1986) book called D.W.Griffith's Intolerance: Its Genesis and Its Vision.