How did Intolerance use cross-cutting to connect stories from different time periods?

In his 1916 epic Intolerance, director D.W. Griffith utilized cross-cutting to weave together four distinct narratives spanning 2,500 years of history. By rapidly alternating between these stories—the fall of Babylon, the Crucifixion of Jesus, the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, and a contemporary tale of a wrongfully condemned man—Griffith illustrated a recurring human propensity for intolerance across different eras.1

This technique, which Griffith had previously refined as a "last-minute rescue" device in earlier works, was employed here as a fundamental structural principle. By interweaving these separate threads, he created a thematic montage that connected disparate historical events into a single, cohesive argument. As the film progressed, Griffith often held the shots for increasingly shorter durations, a rhythmic technique that heightened emotional intensity and prefigured later theories of montage. Through this sophisticated editing, Griffith transformed the film from a simple collection of stories into a complex, unified exploration of human prejudice.21