I appreciate that D.W. Griffith established the grammar of film. I appreciate that Intolerance audaciously cross-cuts between 4 milieus in quite an experiment... but the context for this is so long gone no one can call it a triumph (even those who do). I've yet to see a silent film that makes it across the sound barrier. The longer the film, the worse the chances. All of Griffith's endless narrative embroidering here makes the stories less interesting, not more refined. The silent technique itself biases the material, by privileging the visual over the audible, where ideas lie. A very small range of the ideological can be conveyed silently. <br /><br />What we're left with is 4 time periods, and 3 hours of prancing. Whenever a crisis occurs, or a mood is heightened, we get more prancing. Need more emotion? More prancing! More passion? More prancing! They shouldn't call them silent films, they should call them prancing films. The frame-rate also contributes to the problem. No one remembers Metropolis (Lang), Scarlet Letter (Sjostrom), Caligari, Nosferatu for the dramatic arc, just the techniques and visuals, another enormous barrier to enjoying silent film.<br /><br />Recent news that the lost portions of Lang's Metropolis, have been found in South America offer only the hope the movie offers a few more strong visuals, not any hope for the dated, overextended story of Fredor and Maria. And of course we're sure to get more prancing.