Intolerance (movie)

Intolerance is a silent film directed by D.W. Griffith in 1916. The film, considered one of the great masterpieces of the Silent Era, was made in response to critics, who claimed that Griffith's 1915 epic, The Birth of a Nation was racist.

The film itself features four stories told in parallel, bridged by the central theme of intolerance and the image of a mother rocking a cradle in a featurless room. The two stories given the most screen time are one about a religious war in ancient Babylon, and a modern-day story of how social reformers and social workers destroy the lives of a young couple. The other two stories receive significantly less attention; they are a story set during the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The narrative jumps back and forth between the four storylines, with the intercutting becoming faster and more intense as the film goes on, reaching a climactic height at the end.

The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

External link

• Summary and discussion of the movie at Filmsite.org, a website about classical American movies