Intolerance is a 1916 American silent film directed by D. W. Griffith and is considered one of the great masterpieces of the Silent Era. The three-and-a-half hour epic intercuts four parallel storylines each separated by several centuries: A contemporary melodrama of crime and redemption; a Judean story: Christ’s mission and death; a French story: the events surrounding the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572; and a Babylonian story: the fall of the Babylonian Empire to Persia in 539 BC. Intolerance was made partly in response to criticism of Griffith's previous film, The Birth... of a Nation , which was attacked by the NAACP and other groups as perpetuating racial stereotypes and glorifying the Ku Klux Klan. This complex film consists of four distinct, but parallel, stories—intercut with increasing frequency as the film builds to a climax—that demonstrate mankind's persistent intolerance throughout the ages. The film sets up moral and psychological connections among the different stories.
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| Release date: | 1916 |
| Directed by: | D. W. Griffith |
| Runtime: | 163 Minutes |
| Producer: | D. W. Griffith |
| Editor: | James E. Smith |
| Music by: | Carl Davis |
| Cinematography: | Billy Bitzer |
| Estimated budget: | $2,000,000 |