Interracial love from the director of ‘Birth of a Nation’
Broken Blossoms (D.W. Griffith, 1919)
After directing the epic ‘Birth of a Nation’, a film that I’d imagine has been the subject of more ‘It’s a great film, but…’ lectures than any other, D.W. Griffith attempted in his next few films to offer a cinematic mea culpa. While the enormous epic ‘Intolerance’ is the most famous of these, ‘Broken Blossoms’ came a few years later and actually cost more than Birth, although it does not appear so on screen. Shot entirely on sets that are designed to mimic a few squalid areas in London, the film is visually quite beautiful in its visual despondency and crafts a believable milieu for its characters to roam. Blossoms also incorporates a slew of cinematographic tricks to make star Lillian Gish appear radiant and otherworldly, as she is the fable’s stand in for pure innocence and benevolence. Also appearing here is Richard Barthelmess, a longtime Griffith collaborator, as the kind Chinese man that aids the heroine.
As The Yellow Man, Barthelmess begins the story in China, where as a Buddhist he decides the western world needs a touch of Eastern kindness and moves to London to improve the world. Years later he finds himself poor, outcast, and addicted to opium that he smokes alone in his apartment above his shop. His life is suddenly transformed when he encounters Gish, the pitiful daughter of local boxing ace Battling Burroughs. Burroughs is a drunk, violent man that often takes out his rage on his daughter in the form of a leather whip, and when he whips her to the point of near-death she manages to drag herself to the Chinese shopkeeper’s door and collapse. There, she is mended, given nice silk clothes, and treated as a human being for the first time in her life. The Chinese man is instantly in love, although their love is never consummated and instead takes the form of wide-eyed stares of longing. Of course, Burroughs finds out about this and assumes his daughter is having a tryst with a foreigner, the one thing he hates above all others. Thus, the conflict is borne, to be played out in a number of riveting scenes that lose none of their emotional power despite the lack of sound.
While ‘Broken Blossoms’ is an excellent film, it requires a certain caveat before watching. The acting can be broad at times, which is common for many silent movies. Also, the attitudes towards the Chinese seem painfully dated to a 21st century audience, as the Chinese character is played by a white man in makeup, continually referred to as ‘Chink’ or ‘Yellow Man’, and possesses myriad stereotypes: addicted to opium, a shopkeeper, constantly sharing Buddhist wisdom in a removed phrasing that implies a higher plane of consciousness. Still, the story is effective and essential for students of film history, considering much of the common cinematic language was invented by Griffith. ‘Broken Blossoms’ is ultimately a fable about tolerance and forbidden love, and in this regard it succeeds wonderfully.
