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| Genre: | Classics |
| Year: | 1919 |
| Rating: | NR |
| Length: | 1 Hour 29 Minutes |
| Cast: | Lillian Gish and Richard Barthelmess. |
| Credits: | Directed by D. W. Griffith. |
One of the world's first art films and director D. W. Griffith's most affecting work, this exquisite silent melodrama emphasizes atmosphere and emotion over spectacle. Based on a story by Thomas Burke, Broken Blossoms stars Richard Barthelmess as a gentle, spiritually minded Chinese man who immigrates to London and takes a job as a shopkeeper in the city's seamy Limehouse district. There he falls in love with an ethereal waif (the incomparable Lillian Gish) and attempts, with tragic results, to rescue her from her violently abusive prizefighter father (Donald Crisp). Although not nearly as ugly and hysterical in its racism as Griffith's Birth of a Nation, Broken Blossoms is as reviled for the stereotyping of its Asian character as it is admired for its artistry. The Chinese protagonist portrayed by the Caucasian Barthelmess is referred to in title cards as "The Yellow Man" or "Chink" and portrayed as exotic, dissipated, effeminate, and slightly perverse in his sexless but fetishistic adoration of the very white and virginal Gish. Yet the doomed shopkeeper is a sympathetic and ultimately heroic character and is shown to be superior in every way to Crisp's brutal, brawling Englishman. And even if the film's story and sensibilities seem dated, Barthelmess and Gish bring a passion and sensitivity to their roles that make Broken Blossoms moving, universal, and timeless. When Griffith captures the actors in close-up (a technique still new at that point) as they exchange their first languid glances, the image of their faces framed in cameraman Billy Bitzer's iris is one of cinema's most primal and beautiful moments. The entire film has a heady, dreamlike quality: The London waterfront setting (painstakingly reconstructed on a studio back lot) is perpetually shrouded in shadows and fog; bursts of flowery, antiquated poetry adorn the title cards; delicate washes of color tint entire scenes -- deep blue for night, pinks and yellows to suggest sunrises and sunsets. Seductive as the opium the shopkeeper puffs from his "lilied pipe," Broken Blossoms still casts a lingering spell. Kryssa Schemmerling
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