D. W. Griffith may have invented the "blockbuster" with Birth of a Nation, but it was this film with which he invented the epic. Intolerance is 3+ hours of sprawling story covering love, injustice, excess, five time periods, and some of the biggest sets ever created for film. It cost him 2 million dollars to make in 1916 . . . a price tag he never recovered from. It's an epic failure, perhaps . . . but it's still an epic, and one of the most formative feature films in history.