It's hard to look back at a movie like this and judge how it looked to the original audience. Knowing that they didn't flock to see it, I can only guess that it may have been too ambitious of a work for it's time. Mixing four stories into one movie, going back and forth from one story line to another throughout, may have been too much of a strain on the movie-goers of 1915. I know it was too much for me. I had a similar difficulty with "Pulp Fiction", which in retrospect looks like a variation on the theme. At least I now know where the idea came from.

A documentary film done in 1975 called "The Moving Picture Boys In the Great War" points to "Intolerance" as an example of the American movie industry's support for the pacifist policies of the Wilson Administration prior to April 1917. But that support quickly gave way to war enthusiasm once war was declared on Germany. It's hard for me to tell if "Intolerance" was truly cutting edge, or just a clever way of trying to play to the tastes of the times.

INTOLERANCE IS ONE OF THE GREATEST ACHEIVEMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE SILENT CINIMA. I HAVE ONLY ONE COMPLAINT OF THE ALPHA VIDEO VERSION OF THIS FILE: THE PICTURE QUAILTY IS NOT AS GOOD AS THE HIGHER PRICED VERSION, BUT ALL IN ALL IT IS A TRUE CLASSIC AND I WOULD LIKE TO THANK ALPHA VIDEO FOR MAKING THESE CLASSICS AVAILABLE AT AN AFFORDABLE PRICE, AND I HOPE THEY WILL BE ADDING MORE TITLES FROM THE SILENT ERA IN THE FUTURE.

What can I say about DW Griffith? He was a genius and truly a great movie maker. This silent epic weaves 4 stories together under the theme of mankind's inhumanity to man -- and Griffith isn't afraid to let you know what he thinks. Ignore the bigotry of his personal beliefs, the film is a treasury of every type of movie making basics from the long crane shots to the close up. Imagine making Cinema in 1916 when no one has ever done it! Invest the few bucks and put this in your library.