Intolerance app for iPhone and iPad

Director D.W. Griffiths expensive, most ambitious silent film masterpiece. Intolerance (1916) is one of the milestones and landmarks in cinematic history.

Many reviewers and film historians consider it the greatest film of the silent era.

The mammoth film was also subtitled: "A Sun-Play of the Ages" and "Loves Struggle Throughout the Ages." Griffith was inspired to make this film after watching the revolutionary Italian silent film epic Cabiria (1914) by director Giovanni Pastrone.

The film takes place in four different time periods, cutting between the different stories rather than showing them consecutively. The two main stories are a modern story, which takes place in a “western city” in the United States and a story set in ancient Babylon in 539 B.C., chronicling the fall of the empire. Two other stories are featured: taking place in Paris in 1572, during the reign of Charles IX, concerning the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and a story in ancient Jerusalem, which depicts a few incidents from the life of Jesus. According to the title cards, the film is about intolerance and the folly of a group of people discriminating against another group. The subtitle for the film, Love’s Struggle Through the Ages, might offer some clues, but in truth, the themes are somewhat forced and the stories have little connection.

The sets and costumes for the Babylonian story are among the best in film history. The battle scenes equal anything in Birth of a Nation. Griffiths Babylonian set is so huge it allows for horse-drawn chariots to ride side by side on the road at the top of the towering walls. The camera shot that shows the chariots and the battle many stories below is astounding. There is also the famous camera shot that slowly moves closer and closer the the city steps and gates where hundreds of dancers perform a pagan production number. Extraordinary.