Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Intolerance (1916)

After the success of his first feature film, The Birth of a Nation (1915), D.W. Griffith began work on Intolerance (1916), an ambitious, multithreaded indictment of man’s intolerance and cruelty to man. Largely a historical drama, with sections staged in Babylonian, Judean and French Reformation eras appended to a modern story originally shot in October 1914 as The Mother and the Law (1915).

Since there are as many versions of the film as there are surviving prints, collectors should select a home video edition that balances film length with the best visual quality.

This first HD edition of Intolerance has been mastered from the digitally restored 35mm print materials held by Cohen Media Group. Digital processing has diminished (but not eliminated) exposure fluctuations and many of the common print issues (dust, speckling, emulsion damage, processing flaws, timing marks, frame jitters, etc.) have been removed with only the littlest of flaws remaining in the well-defined HD scan.

The film is accompanied by an orchestral music score composed and conducted by Carl Davis with the Luxembourg Radio Symphony Orchestra. As with other Davis scores we have heard, this music is excellent at conveying an atmosphere that is appropriate to the film’s action.

A second disc of supplemental material includes Griffith’s revisionist edits of the film, The Mother and the Law (1919) and The Fall of Babylon (1919), presented with musical accompaniment by The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra from 35mm prints that have not been restored; a featurette on the impact of Intolerance featuring film historian Kevin Brownlow (19 minutes); and the 2013 rerelease trailer (2 minutes). An insert booklet with essays by William Drew and Richard Porton is included in the set.

While this is our recommended home video edition of the film, this Blu-ray Disc edition is offered at the staggering suggested retail price of nearly fifty dollars. Nonetheless, the resulting visual quality may easily be deemed as worth the cost as the disc is an excellent viewing experience.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

The film is accompanied by an orchestral music score composed by Carl Davis. The supplementary films are accompanied by music performed by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.

Supplementary material includes a featurette on the impact of Intolerance featuring film historian Kevin Brownlow (19 minutes); and an insert booklet with writings on the film by William M. Drew, Richard Porton and Pauline Kael, and vintage images.

Sight unseen, we recommend this edition for European collectors. North American collectors will need a region-free Blu-ray Disc player to view this edition.

United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region B Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.co.uk. Support Silent Era.

The information about this edition has been lean, and little is known about this two-disc edition as to the film’s restoration, the accompanying music, and the possibility of supplemental materials.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

This DVD edition reveals a natural-speed video transfer that has been prepared from a compilation of very-good to excellent 35mm prints into one of the longest versions of the film available. The source material has a familiar amount of dust, speckling, scrapes and scuffing, emulsion chipping, schmutz and exposure fluctuations in the full-frame picture. The disc still looks pretty good on HD systems capable of upscaling an interlaced image into a progressive scan image.

The film is accompanied by a music score composed and performed on digital keyboards by Joseph Turrin. While we applaud the effort that goes into composing more than three hours of music, we feel that acoustic instruments such as a piano and a violin do more to convey the emotional atmosphere of a silent film than do synthesizers with their sometimes annoying (at very least, artificial) sonic qualities. That having been said, the music more than serves its purpose while only occasionally being abrasive.

Supplemental material includes a filmed introduction and epilogue by Orson Welles from The Silent Years television series (5 minutes); exerpts from The Last Days of Pompeii (1913) (3 minutes), Cabiria (1914) (5 minutes), and The Fall of Babylon (1919) (1 minute); a stills archive of promotional materials (24 images); notes on the music score by Joseph Turrin and a biography (8 images); and an examination of the Intolerance book seen at the beginning of the film (3 images).

While this DVD edition of Intolerance is out-of-print, it still can be found for sale from a number of sources.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a very-good 35mm print. There is a moderately high amount of dust, speckling, emulsion chipping and scuffing, frame jitters (noticable on splices) and other print flaws in the picture. Some sections of the source material appear to have inserted from a good to very-good 16mm reduction print. The standard resolution scan looks reasonably good on HD systems that are line-doubling the image.

The film is accompanied by a music score performed on theater pipe organ by an unidentified musician. The low-fidelity recording has likely been duplicated from the optical soundtrack of the source print.

This is the best-looking DVD edition of a black & white print produced by an independent home video company and is a reasonable value for its moderate cost.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD+R edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

This early DVD edition reasonably presents the film in this standard-definition video transfer originally prepared for release on laserdisc and VHS videotape in the 1990s. Edition producer David Shepard attempted to assemble the most complete version of the film possible to restore it in a close approximation of the original roadshow version. As cited in the disc’s supplemental essay, Griffith’s 1926 “Standard Version” of the film was mainly utilized in this restoration, with additional footage inserted from a 1917 print. The resulting picture has a typical amount of dust, speckling, scraches, emulsion chipping, miscellaneous print wear, exposure fluctuations, schmutz and other print flaws. In comparison to other home video editions that are available today, the results are good but have been surpassed in quality by newer editions scanned in high-resolution.

The film is accompanied by a music score performed by Gaylord Carter on a theatre pipe organ score and digitally recorded in 1990.

Supplemental material includes an on-screen essay by Russell Merritt that includes illustrative still frames and photos with representative excerpts from The Reformers; or, The Lost Art of Minding One’s Business (1913) [14 minutes], By Man’s Law (1913) [4 minutes], Cabiria (1914) [2 minutes], alternate shots of the Babylonian set from a 1917 print of Intolerance recovered in Venezuela [4 minutes] and The Mother and the Law (1919 version) [5 minutes], and a timed slideshow of nitrate frames from the 1916 copyright registration record [30 minutes]..

The DVD can be hard to find (since it is long out-of-print) but some collectors may deem it necessary to search for a copy.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

North American collectors will need a region-free PAL DVD player capable of outputting an NTSC-compatible signal to view this edition.

United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 2 PAL DVD edition from Amazon.co.uk. Support Silent Era.
This Region 2 PAL DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

North American collectors will need a region-free PAL DVD player capable of outputting an NTSC-compatible signal to view this edition.

United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 2 PAL DVD edition from Amazon.co.uk. Support Silent Era.
This Region 2 PAL DVD boxset has been discontinued and is . . .

This DVD edition has been mastered from a standard resolution scan of a very-good 35mm print. The results are only as good as the standard issue DVDs of the early 2000s, with substandard image detail despite the obvious quality of the source material. There is a moderately high amount of dust, speckling, processing inperfections and other schmutz with some persistent frame instability. This would have been a good home video edition some twenty years ago, but now . . .

The film is accompanied by an adaptation of the original Joseph Carl Breil music score commissioned by Griffith for the film performed by Eric Beheim and the VCI Orchestra (read, performed entirely on synthesizers). The music is serviceable but we find that some of Beheim’s synthsizer settings are annoying.

Mysteriously, this edition has disappeared from all Amazon sites — likely due to pressure from the cancel culture movement to deny the existence of the accompanying feature, The Birth of a Nation. In light of the other available editions of Intolerance noted above, we do not recommend this home video edition.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition is available directly from . . .

This budget DVD edition of Intolerance has been transferred full-frame from a very-good color-tinted and color-toned 16mm reduction print, which is in reasonable condition but is still compromised by the usual shortcomings of the format: dust, speckling, slightly soft image details, etc. The transfer has, unfortunately, been made as sound speed, which — for a Griffith film shot at a slow rate of approximately 14-16 frames a second — means the film plays at entirely too fast a rate (accounting in part for the shorter than usual running time).

The film is accompanied by a piano music score that appears to have been recorded to accompany the film. We have not identified the performer or the producer of the source print but we suspect that it is a William Perry performance from the soundtrack of an older Paul Killiam print.

We are not certain whether the video transfers of the supplemental films on this DVD have been licensed from the original producers. The Paleface utilizes the transfer produced by David Shepard available from Kino. The Rink has been lifted from the 1:21 windowboxed transfer produced by David Shepard. The windowboxed video transfer of Felix in Hollywood has apparently been lifted from a DVD edition of Felix cartoons. Disney’s The Mechanical Cow has been lifted from a VHS videotape copy of a sepia-tined 16mm reduction print. The Tuba Tooter transfer is from an overcropped 16mm reduction print. While all of these supplemental films are quite watchable, the picture information has been considerably more compressed than their original sources.

There are better editions of this important film to be had. Why buy cheap?

This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

This budget DVD edition has been transferred full-frame from a contrasty 8mm reduction print which suffers from a number of shortcomings including blown-out highlights, plugged-up shadows, exposure fluctuations, soft image details, speckling, dust, scratches, emulsion damage, frame jitters and more. A big disappointment, even for a low-budget disc, and warrants an audible, disbelieving, “Wow.”

The film is accompanied by a serviceable but unrelated orchestral soundtrack compiled from preexisting recordings. Not the best results.

While this edition is manufactured-on-demand on dual-layer DVD-R these days, our older file copy is a standard dual-layered DVD. We do not recommend this disc as there are better editions of the film available, even among the budget Intolerance discs.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available directly from . . .

The film is likely to be accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from preexisting recordings.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

A canned music track accompanies the film.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
DELTA ENTERTAINMENT has discontinued business and this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition is . . .

Other silent era LILLIAN GISH films available on home video.

Other silent era MAE MARSH films available on home video.

Other WALLACE REID films available on home video.