D.W. Griffith's "Intolerance: Love's Struggle Through the Ages" (1916)
The film consists of four distinct, but parallel, storylines, each separated by several centuries, that demonstrate humankind's persistent intolerance throughout the ages. The four stories are intercut with increasing frequency as the film builds to its climax. The timeline covers approximately 2,500 years.
First, a contemporary melodrama of crime and redemption. The American "Modern" story (1914) demonstrates how crime, moral puritanism, and conflicts between ruthless capitalists and striking workers help ruin the lives of marginalized Americans. To get more money for his spinster sister's charities, a mill owner orders a 10% pay cut to his workers' wages. An ensuing workers' strike is crushed and The Boy and The Dear One make their way to another city; she lives in poverty and he turns to crime. After they marry, he tries to break free of crime but is framed for theft by his ex-boss. While he is in prison, his wife must endure their child being taken away by the same "moral uplift society" that instigated the strike. Upon his release from prison, he discovers his ex-boss attempting to rape his wife. A struggle begins and in the confusion the girlfriend of the boss shoots and kills the boss. She escapes and The Boy is convicted and sentenced to the gallows. A kindly policeman helps The Dear One find the real killer and together they try to reach the Governor in time so her reformed husband will not be hanged.
Second, a Judean story. Christ's mission and death. The Biblical "Judean" story (AD 27) recounts how, after the Wedding at Cana and the Woman Taken in Adultery, intolerance led to the Crucifixion of Jesus. This sequence is the shortest of the four.
Third, a French story: the events surrounding the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572. The Renaissance "French" story (1572) tells of the religious intolerance that led to the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of Protestant Huguenots fomented by the Catholic Royal House of Valois.
And fourth, a Babylonian story. The fall of the Babylonian Empire to Persia in 539 BC. The ancient "Babylonian" story (539 BC) depicts the conflict between Prince Belshazzar of Babylon and Cyrus the Great of Persia. The fall of Babylon is a result of intolerance arising from a conflict between devotees of two rival Babylonian gods, Bel-Marduk and Ishtar.
The breaks between the differing time period scenes are linked by by shots of the symbolic image of a woman (Lillian Gish) representing Eternal Motherhood, rocking a cradle, symbolizing the passing of generations.
A 1916 epic silent history drama film directed by D. W. Griffith, written by Griffith and Tod Browning, starring Lillian Gish, Robert Harron, and Mae Marsh.
The film cross-cuts and interweaves the four segments over great gaps of space and time, with over 50 transitions between the segments. Each story of this three-and-a-half-hour epic had its own distinctive color tint in the original print.
One of the characteristics of this colossal undertaking featuring monumental sets, lavish period costumes and more than 3,000 extras, is that the characters do not have names. Griffith named them to be emblematic of human types. These names reveal Griffith's sentimentalism, which was already hinted at in "The Birth of a Nation" (1915), with names such as The Little Colonel. The lot on Sunset Boulevard featured a Babylon set with 300-foot tall walls as well as streets of Judea and medieval France. The Belshazzar feast scene alone, cost an astronomical sum. A third of the budget went into making the Babylonian segments of the film.
Griffith began shooting the film with the Modern Story, originally titled "The Mother and the Law", whose planning predated the great commercial success of "The Birth of a Nation". He then greatly expanded it to include the other three parallel stories under the theme of intolerance. Three hundred thousand feet of film were shot.
In response to "The Birth of a Nation" being derided by the NAACP and others for perpetuating and supporting racial stereotypes and glorifying the Ku Klux Klan, Griffith chose to explore the theme of intolerance. It was not an apology. Griffith felt he had nothing to apologize for, and made it clear that the film was a rebuttal to his critics and he felt that they were, in fact, the intolerant ones.
In the years following its release, this film and its unorthodox editing were enormously influential, particularly among European film movements and Soviet filmmakers. Many of the numerous assistant directors Griffith employed in making the film including Erich von Stroheim, Tod Browning, and Woody Van Dyke, went on to become important and noted Hollywood directors.
Regarded as one of the most influential films of the silent era, though it received mixed reviews at the time. In 1958, the film was voted number 7 on the Brussels 12 list at the 1958 World Expo. In 1989, it was one of the first films to be selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.