Intolerance (1916) (Masters of Cinema, 2 Blu-rays)

Read more

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.