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

I.   What are the four (4) stories?

Intolerance is a grandiose composite epic, interweaving four separate morality plays from different eras and settings, from 20th-century America (the "Modern Story") to Old Testament times (the "Babylonian Story"). Rounding out the four are a brief survey of the life and death of Christ (the "Galilean Story") and events from the 16th-century persecution and massacre of Huguenot Protestants under the Medicis, including the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (the "French Story").

The four widely separate, yet paralleled stories are set in different ages - and in the original print, each story was tinted with a different color. Three of the four are based on factual history:

·         THE 'MODERN' STORY (A.D. 1914): (Amber Tint) 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): (Blue Tint) 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): (Sepia Tint) 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.): (Gray-Green Tint) 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.

II.   What is a story?

Provide definition and example with references to the film.

A story in its broadest sense is anything told or recounted; more narrowly, and more usually, something told or recounted in the form of a causally-linked set of events or account or tale: the telling of a happening or connected series of happenings, whether true or fictitious.  In plain and simple way to understand it is by look it as a series of events recorded in their chronological order.

Referring to Intolerance, we have to look at a single storyline out of the four being portrayed.  In this example, the story underlying the American Modern Story (A.D. 1914) demonstrates the story of how crime, moral puritanism, and conflicts between ruthless capitalists and striking workers help ruin the lives of marginal Americans. Briefly, the story begins from a mill owner orders a 10% pay cut on his workers’ wages to get more money for his spinster sister's charities. A workers strike is crushed and The Boy and The Dear One make their way to another city; she lives in poverty and he turns to crime; after they marry he tries to break free of crime but is framed for theft by his ex boss. While he is in prison, his wife must endure their child being taken away by the same "moral uplift society" that instigated the strike. Upon his released from prison, he discovers his ex-boss attempting to rape his wife. A struggle begins and in the confusion the girlfriend of the boss shoots and kills the boss. She escapes and the boy is convicted and sentenced to the gallows. A kindly policeman helps the dear one find the real killer and together they try to reach the Governor in time so her reformed husband won't be hanged.

III.   What is a plot?

Provide definition and examples with reference to the film.

Plot can be referred as storyline in short.  It most commonly means an outline of events, a scenario, an articulation of the skeleton of narrative.  At an intermediate stage of abstraction, plot is seen as the arrangement of the incidents or as the relationship both among incidents and between each incident or element and the whole.  This also means the pattern or geometry of the narrative.  Plot is also used to refer to an underlying structure which is to be understood less in terms of the incidents or elements it organizes and more in terms of the mind that does the organizing.

As for the movie Intolerance plot, four separate stories are woven together, each one commenting on how "hatred and intolerance, through the ages, have battled against love and charity": a Modern story dealing with a workers strike and a man wrongly accused of murder, a Babylonian tale involving the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus the Persian (538 B.C.), the life and Crucifixion of Christ in Judea, and the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of Huguenots in France (1572 A.D.).

The Modern story deals with various people forced into the same neigborhood because of a violently supressed workers' strike. A virtuous young woman referred to as The Dear One gets married to the boy, and they have a child. A group of reform women wrongly consider the dear one a bad mother and have her baby taken away. The boy is later incorrectly convicted of murdering his old crime boss and is scheduled to be hanged. Evidence turns up that he is innocent, and there is a successful last minute rescue to save his life. The couple are reunited with their child.

The Babylonian tale centers on a feisty Mountain Girl who becomes devoted to Prince Belshazzar, a powerful leader who promotes religious freedom. A rival sect plans to help the Persians overthrow Babylon, and there is a subsequent battle that the Babylonians win. They begin celebrating, but the Mountain Girl discovers another plot to destroy the city. She races back to warn Belshazzar, but they cannot mount a defence in time and are both killed as the city is conquered. The Judean story begins illustrating some self-rightous Pharisees. It then details some of Christ's deeds and miracles and ends with his Crucifixion.

The French story involves the doomed love of two Huguenots, Brown Eyes and Prosper Latour, who are both killed in the massacre at the end of the story. The stories are intercut among each other and linked by a transitional shot of a mother rocking a cradle that symbolizes man's continuous struggle. As each of the stories draws to a close, the intercutting becomes faster, and the transition is left out. An epilogue symbolically shows Good triumphing over Evil: a prison turns into a peaceful meadow, a battle site turns into a field with playing children, and fighting soldiers become peaceful as figures in Heaven descend towards Earth.