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The greatest set of all time, from what may be the greatest movie of all time. Griffith's fantastic Babylon set, of which this is only a portion, still takes one's breath away. The Ruth St. Denis dancers are on the steps in the foreground.
Intolerance, uie
In characterizing it as "the greatest film of all time" and "the only film fugue," the late Professor Theodore Huff, one of the world's leading film historians, went on to say that Intolerance was perhaps the only film entitled to take its place as an individual work of art alongside Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, the works of Michelangelo, and so on.
These are big statements— but statements not made without a great deal of thought. Is it possible to single out any one film, and say "This is the greatest"? Frankly I don't know. But if I were asked, "What film is greater than Intolerance?" I couldn't provide an answer.
Intolerance never was, and probably never will be, a popular box office film. It was way ahead of its time in 1916. It's still ahead of its time today. And certainly no director exists today with the genius and vision of
D. W. Griffith, who conceived and directed Intolerance. Even if one did, it is unlikely that any studio would back him up and give him a really free hand. It has been reliably estimated that to remake Intolerance today just the way it was made in 1916, but with the addition of a sound track, would cost in excess of thirty million dollars!
In this mighty thirteen-reel film (cut down from many times that length) Griffith attacked intolerance and bigotry through the ages. He did so via four separate stories. A modern story, based on an actual case of labor troubles and the problems of a young couple (Mae Marsh and Robert Harron) came to its climax with the husband condemned to death for a murder he didn't commit. A biblical story concerned the betrayal and -crucifixion of Christ. France in the Middle Ages provided the setting for a third story
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