Hacker Cinema
Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages
1916 · Film · 197 min
Directed by D.W. Griffith
The story of a poor young woman, separated by prejudice from her husband and baby, is interwoven with tales of intolerance from throughout history.
2 positive2 neutralfrom 4 commenters
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5 comments on Hacker News
I remember watching Intolerance (1916) by D.W. Griffith at the Avignon festival as a teenager in 1986, with a score interpreted by a live symphonic orchestra (https://festival-avignon.com/fr/edition-1986/programmation/intolerance-32452). The movie in itself is definitively a masterpiece for its ambitious structure, innovative editing and grandiose production design (it was a flop at the box office in 1916.)
(Warning: Intolerance was Griffith's response to the widespread criticism of his earlier work, The Birth of a Nation (1915), considered "the most controversial film ever made in the United States" and "the most reprehensibly racist film in Hollywood history" - so we're stepping into controversial territory here).
I've been picking from a different list (the huge meta-list project from They Shoot Pictures Don't They, which I think does factor in the 1001-films book as one of a whole bunch of things they feed to their Algorithm) but yeah, a lot of the pre-1930 films were a real slog, at least in part. I only bounced off a very few but I was pretty damn bored for long stretches of some others, I think justifiably so.
Big misses for me were anything horror (Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari—hell, maybe I just don't like German Expressionism?).
Surprise hits were some of the more arthouse films. A Propos de Nice and Man with a Movie Camera were two I loved and are both definitely not conventionally-entertaining. They don't even feature narratives, in any normal sense (but they kinda do?). I also dug some of the Big Damn Movies like Intolerance and Gance's Napoléon—but that wasn't universal, because I found Birth of a Nation unwatchable (I gave it like 90 minutes then bounced—I'd enjoyed none of it, and not just because of the terrible message). Nanook of the North was another surprise hit for me—OK, it's kinda faked or whatever, but they fucking hunted a walrus, for-real, using traditional methods. That they were doing it when they did might have been "fake" because they didn't really do it anymore, but they did it, for-actual-real, which was just nuts to watch, among other things that were "fake" but more-real than a lot of what you might be able to see today.
I manage to make it through a lot of movies that might, not unfairly, be described as "so boring I'd rather be at the DMV" or "so confusing I don't think even the director knew WTF was happening".
I bailed on Birth of a Nation about halfway through. I can usually suffer through a historically-significant film even if I'm not really loving it (I made it through Battleship Potemkin while hardly enjoying a minute) but Birth was just too much. It wasn't the offensiveness (that can be its own kind of entertaining, in a pinch) but that it was really long, and really dull. Maybe it picked up in the back half, but I doubt I'll ever find out.
I'd say the director's sort-of followup Intolerance also counts as a bit of a challenging watch for modern audiences, but I found that one way more fun.
I've seen the vast bulk of the films. Intolerance you definitely need to watch as a period piece. It's a pretty good example although something like Safety Last or The General would be easier to watch examples.Don't really disagree on "Yankee Doodle Dandy." Isn't a lot on the list I seriously disagree with although there are period favorites I'd probably skip and different films I'd include.
>>Or whether it's okay for you to stream a movie you can't find on the market anymore.
That would be a great idea. However, the Popcorn Time website states that they only use torrents from YIFY. A brief perusal of the YIFY website tells me that they only have recent or big blockbuster films. I tried searching for "Koyaanisqatsi" and "Intolerance", and neither showed up. As far as the status of the service goes right now, its main purpose is to stream pirated movies. This could change in the future as Popcorn Time opens up to accept more sources.