IMDb RATING
7.7/10
17K
YOUR RATING
Four historical tales depict the ongoing human struggle against prejudice and inhumanity.Four historical tales depict the ongoing human struggle against prejudice and inhumanity.Four historical tales depict the ongoing human struggle against prejudice and inhumanity.
- Awards
- 2 wins
F.A. Turner
- The Dear One's Father
- (as Fred Turner)
Julia Mackley
- Uplifter
- (as Mrs. Arthur Mackley)
John P. McCarthy
- Prison Guard
- (as J.P. McCarthy)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaDuring filming of the battle sequences, many of the extras got so into their characters that they caused real injury to one another. At the end of one shooting day, a total of 60 injuries were treated at the production's hospital tent.
- GoofsOne of the early title cards in the Judean sequence refers to Jesus having been from "the carpenter shop in Bethlehem". Though he was born in Bethlehem, he worked with his father in a carpenter shop in Nazareth, which is why he was known as Jesus of Nazareth.
- Quotes
Intertitle: When women cease to attract men, they often turn to reform as a second option.
- Crazy creditsConstance Talmadge is credited as 'Georgia Pearce' for her performance as Marguerite de Valois in the French Story. She is credited under her own name in the role of The Mountain Girl in the Babylonian Story.
- Alternate versionsThe movie was officially restored in 1989 by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill for Thames Television. It was transferred from the best available 35mm materials, color-tinted per D.W. Griffith's intent, and contains a digitally recorded orchestral score by Carl Davis. This 176-minute version was released on video worldwide, but has never been telecast in the U.S.
- ConnectionsEdited into The Fall of Babylon (1919)
Featured review
I first saw this picture as a teenager some thirty years ago. I had no idea what to expect; all I knew was the famous still of Belshazzar's feast which has become one of the best known icons depicting the extravagance of crazy old Hollywood. But I was astounded and bowled over by what I saw. I will make no attempt at a plot synopsis here, since several other reviewers on this site have done so. Most readers already know that Griffith set out to tell four separate stories, laid in four widely spaced historical periods, and that he intercut freely between them, increasing the tempo as the film proceeded, and attempted to bring all four to a climax simultaneously. Clearly he bit off more than he, or anybody, could chew; but the fact that the limits of what cinema could do were being pushed so hard so early is what fascinated me then, and still fascinates me now. I wish to heaven that college film courses would just blow off "Birth of a Nation" and consign it to the oblivion it largely deserves, and show "Intolerance" instead, for this indeed is Griffith's monument, despite its poor state of repair; and at the risk of being technical I would like to address this. I have noticed that the one negative comment running most consistently through the reviews posted on this website is the relative lack of weight given to the French and Judaean sequences relative to the Modern and Babylonian narratives. This is largely the fault of the movie's checkered preservation history. When "Intolerance" failed to make huge sums at the box office, Griffith released the Babylonian and Modern stories as individual features in 1919, reshooting some scenes along the way. He cut up the original negative (gasp!) to do this, and by the time he decided to reassemble the whole movie in 1926, it turned out that all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't quite put Humpty Dumpty back together again. There was never a shooting script, or a written continuity; Griffith kept the whole thing in his head, and moreover could never stop tinkering with it while it was in release! Consequently, while the Babylonian and Modern stories have survived largely intact, the French and Judaean episodes were depleted by about half. So when we see it now we must recognize that we are viewing a broken sculpture. The movie is a restorer's nightmare; almost a third of its 2000- plus shots exist in variant versions, and the captions were rewritten more than once. But, broken as it is, it's still magnificent. There has never been, and will never again be, anything like it. It has all of Griffith's inconsistencies: subtle and naturalistic acting from Mae Marsh and Robert Harron as the luckless couple in the Modern Story are seen cheek by jowl with outrageous mugging by Walter Long as the Musketeer of the Slums, or Josephine Crowell's Catherine de Medici in France; but no masterpiece on this scale is ever consistent, after all. I love Connie Talmadge's Mountain Girl from Babylon; smart, funny and crazy. Other favorites: Tully Marshall as the villainous Priest of Bel; Seena Owen as the Princess beloved, my personal nomination for Most Fabulous Body of the Hollywood 1910s, never mind the deranged costumes; Alfred Paget as a genuinely humane Belshazzar; Howard Gaye as a believable and totally unforced Jesus. Everything the silent screen of 1916 could do, good, bad, subtle, overblown, crazy or glorious is embodied here; and Griffith never rode so high again. The most satisfactory version currently available, in my opinion, is the Kino on Video edition on vhs and dvd, the one illustrated when you first call the picture up on this site. There are some problems and a few missing bits that I take exception to, but overall this is the version that first time viewers should try.
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Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- Also known as
- Intolerance: A Sun-Play of the Ages
- Filming locations
- Silver Lake, Los Angeles, California, USA(Babylon set)
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $385,907 (estimated)
- Runtime2 hours 43 minutes
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
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