Intolerance
Capsule by Jonathan Rosenbaum
From the Chicago Reader

D.W. Griffith's 1916 masterpiece, described by Pauline Kael as "perhaps the greatest movie ever made and the greatest folly in movie history," cuts among four stories linked by images of Lillian Gish and a quote from Whitman ("Out of the cradle, endlessly rockingThe Birth of a Nation, Intolerance launched ideas about associative editing that have been essential to the cinema ever since, from Soviet montage classics to recent American experimental films. And in the use of crosscutting and action to generate suspense, the film's climax hasn't been surpassed. 178 min.

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