After shaking the world with his hugely controversial epic The Birth of a Nation, pioneer filmmaker D. W. Griffith spared no expense in putting together his next project: a powerful examination of intolerance as it has persisted throughout civilisation, set across four parallel storylines that span 2500 years.
There is the Babylonian story, depicting nothing less than the fall of Babylon; the Judean story, which revolves around the crucifixion of Christ; the French story, which presents the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in all its horror; and a modern American story of class struggle, crime, and the plight of life in the early 20th century set within urban slums and the prison system.
Starring such luminaries as Lillian Gish, Constance Talmadge, and Miriam Cooper, who share screentime with an enormous main cast and some 3,000 extras, Griffith’s film — the most expensive motion picture ever produced at the time — went on to become a critical success whose influence has only grown in the decades since. The Masters of Cinema Series are proud to present the 2013 restoration of Kevin Brownlow’s and David Gill’s preserved Intolerance, featuring Carl Davis’s orchestral score, for the first time on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK.
Streaming Options
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Technical Specifications
Supplements
- Orchestral score by the esteemed composer Carl Davis in both stereo and 5.1 soundtracks
- Two feature-length films by Griffith that act as companion pieces to Intolerance and take their material from the main film: The Fall of Babylon and The Mother and the Law, accompanied by new scores by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
- Three Hours That Shook the World: Observations on 'Intolerance', a 2013 documentary featuring preservationist Kevin Brownlow discussing the film
- 40-PAGE BOOKLET filled with vintage and modern reports, reflections, and essays on the film