HIS MAJESTY’S THEATRE.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1420, 12 July 1917, Page 30

HIS MAJESTY’S THEATRE.

“INTOLERANCE." A COLOSSAL PICTURE SPECTACLE. Nothing short of a sensation was caused at His Majesty’s Theatre on Saturday night, when the first presentation .of D. AV. Griffith’s mighty film took place. A packed house at 7.30, and hundreds turned away, showed the strength of public opinion on the matter, and at the conclusion of the production there was a unanimous verdict that the magnitude of this remarkable picture play absolutely defied description. Only in superlatives could one get anywhere near it. It is the wonder picture of the ages, and how the brain of one man could conceive such a spectacle is astounding. A brilliant Sydney writer thus sums him up: “Griffith is not a man; he is a multitude — dramatist, architect, artist, historian, antiquary, thinker, poet, realist, romanticist, satirist, organiser, stage manager, business director, master of prosaic details, and wizard conjuring with the stars!” It is impossible to imagine the colossal features of “Intolerance” unless one has seen it. It has one theme told in four plain stories, covering periods dating 539 B.C. up to the present time, and he interweaves the four ages with the one thread —intolerance, forcing home the mighty truth of the message he would convey, in scene after scene of gorgeous splendour and vivid realism. The modern story is a melodrama full of emotional thrills, showing how easily the innocent may be wronged; the sacred story i,s laid in Judea, and reverently depicts episodes from the life of our Saviour, ending with the Crucifixion; the mediaeval section gives the massacre of the Huguenots on St. Bartholomew’s Day; and the ancient time is expressed by reproductions of Babylon in the heydey of its glory. It is in this Babylonian setting that the fruits of intolerance are seen in their fiercest light. Bacchanalian orgies, gorgeous palace halls, barbaric scenes of splendour, horrific battle scenes, gigantic settings, terrific hand-to-hand fights, mazes of luxury and grandeur, are represented with startling realism and vividness, overwhelming spectators with the immensity of the conception, and thrilling them as they were never thrilled before.