D.W. Griffith's "Intolerance" (1916) - In an attempt to make up for the accusations of being a racist that were levied againts him after "The Birth Of A Nation", Griffith set out to tell 4 parallel stories about man's inhumanity to man: each one taking place in a different time of history. He brings all 4 stories to a simultaneous climax and ends them with a vision of religous rapture.

1. What are the 4 stories?

2. What is a story?

     - provide evidence
3. What is the plot?

            

• THE 'MODERN' STORY (A.D. 1914): In early 20th century America during a time of labor unrest, strikes, and social change in California and ruthless employers and reformers - a young Irish Catholic boy, an exploited worker, is wrongly imprisoned for murder and sentenced to be hung on a gallows. The boy is saved from execution in a last-minute rescue by his wife's arrival with the governor's pardon.
• THE JUDAEAN STORY (A.D. 27): The Nazarene's (Christ's) Judaea at the time of his struggles with the Pharisees, his betrayal and crucifixion (told as a Passion Play in his last days) - it is the shortest of the four stories.
• THE FRENCH STORY (A.D. 1572): Renaissance, 16th century medieval France at the time of the persecution and slaughter of the Huguenots during the regime of Catholic Catherine de Medici and her son King Charles IX of France, and the notorious atrocities of St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre (including its effects upon the planned wedding of a young innocent Huguenot couple - Brown Eyes and Prosper Latour).
• THE BABYLONIAN STORY (539 B.C.): Peace-loving Prince Belshazzar's Babylon at the time of its Siege and Fall by King Cyrus the Persian, due to the treacherous High Priests - and the Mountain Girl's vain efforts to avert the tragedy. The outdoor set for the Babylonian sequences was the largest ever created for a Hollywood film up to its time, and its crowd shots with 16,000 extras were also some of the greatest in cinematic history.

          In his radically non-linear, hybrid film, Griffith simultaneously cross-cuts back and forth and interweaves the segments over great gaps of space and time - there are over 50 transitions between the segments. The villains of the four stories are mill owner Jenkins and his intolerant social reformers, the hypocritical Pharisees - opponents of Christ, the evil regime of the cunning Queen Catherine, and the treacherous High Priest of Babylon. Their powerful actions set in motion disturbing consequences for a modern-day working-class couple, for an average French Huguenot family and its soon-to-be-betrothed daughter Brown Eyes, for the Nazarene/Christ, and for the enlightened, revolutionary and benevolent Prince Belshazzar.

         The symbolic bridging device that interconnects and links together the various stories is the recurring cameo shot of Lillian Gish, his greatest star, as Eternal Motherhood. She endlessly and eternally rocks a cradle, accompanied by the title from Walt Whitman's poem Leaves of Grass: "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking. Uniter of Here and Hereafter - Chanter of Sorrows and Joys." Her iconic image, rocking the cradle of humanity, serves as a symbol of continuity for the entire history of the human race, and a representation of the cycle of life and death.