introduced by Griffith scholar Joyce E. Jesionowski
with live piano accompaniment by Dr. Philip Carli
Excepting perhaps Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance is the most influential of all silent films, and probably one of the five most influential movies in history. Griffith's true monster-work, Intolerance launched ideas about associative editing and shot technique that have been crucial to the world of cinema ever since, from Soviet montage classics to recent American experimental films. Intolerance comprises four narratives linked by the images of the Eternal Mother (Lillian Gish) who tends the cradle of history. "The Nazarene" depicts the betrayal and crucifixion of Christ and stars Bessie Love; "The Medieval Story" focuses on the infamous 1572 St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of Huguenots (French Protestants); "The Fall of Babylon" features almost absurdly monumental sets—it has more to do with cinema as spectacle than intolerance. Finally, "The Mother and the Law" is an exciting contemporary story about industrial America and the terrible deeds done in the name of social uplift that stars famed silent film beauty Mae Marsh and Robert Harnon. Griffith then deploys his innovative editing techniques for cross-cutting between these four narratives, using the action of each story to augment reciprocally the suspense of the others. The frenzied cross-cutting of the film's final minutes increases in pace and remains a momentous cinematic achievement: "In the use of cross-cutting and action to generate suspense, the film's climax hasn't been surpassed in 77 years." (Rosenbaum, The Chicago Reader) It would be hard to underestimate the historical significance of Intolerance, for it changed the shape not only of American cinema, but also informed and determined the technique of a whole generation of important Soviet filmmakers like Einenstein and Pudovkin. "One of the two or three most influential movies ever made, and I think it is the greatest... There is hardly anything that has been attempted in movies since (except for sound effects, of course) that was not tried in Intolerance." (New Yorker) 35mm Archival Print
1916, color, 2 hours 48 minutes, USA