SOURCE: "Intolerence: 1916," in The Great Films: Fifty Golden Years of Motion Pictures, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1967, pp. 17-20.

In the following review, Crowther praises Intolerance for its ambitious scope and complex editing while acknowledging the film's failure to rise above melodrama.

Would success spoil D. W. Griffith?

That thought surely never occurred to anyone at the time The Birth of a Nation was vaunting the fame of the great director throughout the land. Such a triumph must certainly have seemed evidence of his infallibility. And, of course, people were not then as knowing about the evanescence of screen success as they have since become. But this question has been a speculation of students in later years: Did the great success of The Birth of a Nation generate in Griffith such a faith in the responsiveness of the public and in his own capabilities that he was moved to...