Intolerance (1916)

One thing I have often thought to myself is, "If they can put music on silent movies why couldn't they just put dialogue on the music track and make it a 'talkie?'" Technology moves kind of slowly I guess. So far all of the silent movies on AFI's list have been entertaining. There's something timeless about an accident-prone man. I think I've been pretty patient with this whole ordeal, but Intolerance has crossed the line and now I'm mad.

Intolerance is a silent movie about, you guessed it, intolerance. It follows four plots about intolerance, and its effects, throughout history. It shows the fall of Babylon, the crucifixion of Christ, the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre during the French Renaissance, and conflicts between ruthless capitalists in Modern America (or at least modern when this movie came out).

Sounds boring doesn't it? You have no idea. It's 3 hours long! Not only that but the music sounded like something straight from Warcraft. The video below is a pretty good representation of what Intolerance is like. Warning! The clip is over 7 minutes long so you may not want to watch all of it, but at least watch a couple minutes worth.



Let me just come out and say I HATED THIS MOVIE!!! It was so boring, so stupid, and even a little bit confusing. A lot of times the older movies on AFI's list were popular and relevant when they came out and time has buried that meaning. Well newsflash: Intolerance wasn't even popular when it came out! So you're going to stand there and tell me that Intolerance is a good movie when even the people that it was targeted to hated it? Well I'm not buyin' it.

In 1989 the Library of Congress declared it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." So a bunch of pencil pushers in Washington are the reason I had to watch this movie? One of the reasons that Intolerance is considered significant is it was unheard of at that time to blend together different plots. While that is a tactic used very often today, it did not work in a silent movie. It just made the thing confusing. Just because somebody did something before everyone else doesn't mean it was any good. If a technique doesn't work then it doesn't work! I'm beginning to babble, so I should probably end this review. Let me just end by saying that I would give this movie a rating of 0.0 but no movie really deserves a rating that low...except for Crank 2: High Voltage.

The Bottom Line:
Rating: 1.7
Would I own it? If it was given to me as a present I would burn down the house of the person that gave it to me.
Would I recommend it? NNNNOOOOOO!!!!!!