D.W. Griffith's Colossal Spectacle is considered by many critics to be the greatest film of the silent era. The lavish, innovative epic weaves four separate stories that depict the menace of hate, from ancient civilization up to the present day, tied together by a poignant motif of life's continuous struggle with good vs. evil in which the Eternal Mother (Lillian Gish) is seen rocking the cradle of humanity. Griffith's superb dramatization of intolerance is realized through the fall of Babylon, the Pharisees' condemnation of Jesus Christ, the persecution of Huguenots in 16th-century Paris during Catherine de Medici's regime and a contemporary morality play wherein social reformers destroy a young couple's pursuit of happiness.
After the swarm of controversy that Griffith experienced with The Birth of a Nation (1915), he used Intolerance to defensively answer his critics. At two million dollars, it was the most expensive film of its time; the outdoor set for the Babylon sequences was the largest ever created for a Hollywood picture, featuring a crowd of 16,000 extras. The nonlinear, cross-cutting narrative was among the many novel techniques that would influence the art of filmmaking for generations to come.