- Actors: Lillian Gish, Douglas Fairbanks, Mae Marsh, Robert Harron, F.A. Turner
- Directors: D.W. Griffith
- Writers: D.W. Griffith, Anita Loos, Frank E. Woods, Hettie Grey Baker, Mary H. O'Connor
- Format: NTSC
- Language: English
- Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
- Number of discs: 1
- MPAA Rating:
- Studio: Vid Canada
- Release Date: Jan 1 2001
- Run Time: 197 minutes
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- ASIN: 6305186685
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Product Description
Additional features
Of several available on video, this is the definitive version, remastered from the most pristine print available and boasting restored footage exclusive to this video. The film is presented at the correct projection speed, and has been color-tinted. The video also features the original organ score.
Amazon.com essential video
After Birth of a Nation, what do you do for an encore, especially after said film has branded you a racist? D.W. Griffith, the silent era's "king of the world," mounted this melodramatic spectacle of "Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages," four stories that illustrate "how hatred and intolerance have battled against love and charity." Critic Heywood Broun, upon the film's release, probably said it best: "Quite the most marvelous thing which has been put on the screen, but as a theory of life it is trite." But what's on the screen is dazzling!
Griffith interweaves the four parallel stories set, respectively, in the modern era (fuddy-duddy reformers and a workers' strike), Jerusalem (Christ's crucifixion), 1572 Paris (a "hotbed" of persecution against the Huguenots), and ancient Babylon. No collection of silent films is complete without this landmark, awe-inspiring epic, which really does boast a cast of thousands (the most memorable of which is Constance Talmadge as the spunky Mountain Girl). The fall of Babylon ranks with one of the great action set pieces, complete with racing chariots, a nifty decapitation (at the hands of Elmo Lincoln, the man who would be Tarzan), and falls from what appear to be incredible heights. The edge-of-your-seat climax to the modern story, a race against time to save an innocent young man from the electric chair, is another bravura sequence. --Donald Liebenson
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Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not the Alpha!,
By
This review is from: Intolerance (DVD)
Sigh! Once again there is just review after review of the plot and background of a movie, but not one word on the technical aspects and viewability of any given release! I recently decided to purchase Intolerance, but the exisitng reviews did little in helping me chose which version to get. I will admit I was tempted to get the Kino version since I have had good experiences with other releases from that studio, but the extremely reasonable price of the Alpha Video release won me over. It was a big mistake!!! The film is grainy and fuzzy. It's obvious that not a bit of effort was put into getting a good print, let alone restoring it. Out of curiousity, I took the DVD over to a friend's and compared it to a release from Image Entertainment: It was clearer, the contrast was better and was not nearly as grainy.Please, we need more reviews like this so that studios which put out good quality versions will be applauded and those which don't properly chastized!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Intolerance explained...,
By
This review is from: Intolerance (VHS Tape)
Many of the reviewers here rightly praise Griffith's well-deserved credit for his technical achievements. Others criticize him for a poorly constructed film. The fact of the matter is that, for 1916, this film is an incredible feat. The first American big-budget extravaganza, it followed closely in the steps of other big multi-reel films in vogue at the time(Griffith's own Birth of a Nation, and others coming out of Italy). The spectacle alone makes this film worth a look, but viewers should try to contextualize it. There was a great expectation across the nation to what would come from Griffith after the amazing--and incendiary racist-film, Birth of a Nation.What is Intolerance really a metaphor for anyway? Griffith was fighting off attempts by legislators to regulate or censor the motion picture industry. An anti-censorship booklet released by Griffith in 1916 suggests he continued to respond to "moral reformers" even as he assembled Intolerance. In fact, his film is an attempt to address these reformers while simultaneously opining on nothing less than the historic importance of the film media itself. Intolerance is really about a nation's cultural memory and Griffith's attempt to offer a totalizing, yet entertaining version of it. His belief that if we were educated on the subject of past "sins of hate, hypocrisy and intolerance" through the magic of film that we could inoculate ourselves against war, capital punishment and other evils. He argued that film was a better education than traditional education. To quote the master: "Six moving pictures would give students more knowledge of the world than they have obtained from their entire study." Such an understanding is, of course, naïve and dangerous. Griffith was caught in a double-bind. In order to fight the censors he needed to simultaneously argue that his epics (like Birth and Intolerance) were a kind of filmed truth, yet the construction of this "truth" should only be the purview of the director. Griffith's logic is dangerously flawed. Birth of a Nation is hardly true history. In fact its racist vision of blacks fanned the flames of racial hatred in whites and surely accounted for many more lynchings than if the film had not been made. What's missing from his vision is how truth is arrived at: certainly not from a lone man's dictates. We have another word for that... Intolerance is worth viewing because it is a wonderful illustration of the limitations of film. It's a simple morality tale blown up to epic-and phantasmagoric-proportions. It's greatest weakness is the cross-cutting between the four time-periods, and the attempt to narrate all history, yet this is precisely what makes the film interesting. The failure to arrive at an overarching metaphor that somehow spans history and unites us with our past points to Griffith's own flawed vision. It reminds us-contrary to Griffith's own advice-that understanding history in all its irresolvable complexity is absolutely essential.
4.0 out of 5 stars
A must-see silent film,
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This review is from: Intolerance (DVD)
Intolerance is historically significant in the grand scheme of film-making. D.W. Griffith tells four separate stories--all linked with the abstract concept of intolerance. Though dated (hey, it was made in 1916) it still has a gripping series of climaxes that make it worthwhile.
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