Intolerance
Triangle Distributing | Release Date: September 5, 1916 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
99
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 15 Critic Reviews
Positive:
15
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Probably the most influential of all silent films after The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance launched ideas about associative editing that have been essential to the cinema ever since, from Soviet montage classics to recent American experimental films. And in the use of crosscutting and action to generate suspense, the film's climax hasn't been surpassed. Read full review
100
CineVueBen Nicholson
Intolerance may not be perfect, but with such gargantuan spectacle and timeless mastery of form on show, it is nigh on impossible not to be swept up by this centruy-spanning extravanganza and its medium-shaping impact. Read full review
100
EmpireDavid Parkinson
It may seem flawed in a number of ways to some people but this is monumental cinema and essential viewing for true film enthusiasts. Read full review
100
The GuardianPhilip French
A powerful humane statement and a towering work of art. Read full review
100
Village VoiceAaron Cutler
The pure, simple love between couples is threatened by other people’s ignorance throughout D.W. Griffith’s film epic Intolerance. Read full review
100
Chicago ReaderDave Kehr
One of the great breakthroughs—the Ulysses of the cinema—and a powerful, moving experience in its own right. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesHarry Carr
As a medium for expressing art, moving pictures may not stand the test of time, but Intolerance is greater than any medium. It is one of the mileposts on the long road of art, where painting and sculpture and literature and music go jostling eagerly along together. Read full review
100
The New YorkerPauline Kael
D.W. Griffith's epic celebration of the potentialities of the film medium--perhaps the greatest movie ever made and the greatest folly in movie history.
100
The New YorkerRichard Brody
The plunging and roving camera provides visceral thrills; ecstatic special effects capture the sacred (the Crucifixion) and the profane (combat in the Great War); a metaphysical framing device (starring Lillian Gish) raises human conflict to universal import; and Griffith’s trademark closeups lend a quivering lip or a trembling hand the tragic grandeur of historical cataclysm. Read full review
100
The DissolveScott Tobias
Intolerance is thrilling and vital, a collision of historical periods that feels as earth-shaking as the movement of tectonic plates. Read full review
100
Village VoiceMichael Atkinson
It is at least one of cinema’s great vexations, an astonishing and Herculean visual achievement cursed in various amplitudes by auteurism, guilt, memories of bigotry, evolving norms, and the power of cinema itself. Read full review
90
VarietyStaff (Not Credited)
Intolerance reflects much credit to the wizard director, for it required no small amount of genuine art to consistently blend actors, horses, monkeys, geese, doves, acrobats and ballets into a composite presentation of a film classic. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineBill Weber
Likely the most influential film ever made. Read full review
80
The New York TimesStaff (Not Credited)
For in spite of its utter incoherence, the questionable taste of some of its scenes and the cheap banalties into which it sometimes lapses Intolerance is an interesting and unusual picture. The stupendousness of its panoramas, the grouping and handling of its great masses of players, make it an impressive spectacle. Read full review
80
Time OutStaff (Not Credited)
The thematic approach no longer works (if it ever did); the title cards are stiffly Victorian and sometimes laughably pedantic; but the visual poetry is overwhelming, especially in the massed crowd scenes. Read full review
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