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| Barthelmess with the amazing Lillian Gish |
Starring Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess, Donald Crisp
Produced by United Artists
Cheng Huan leaves his native China on a mission to sow the tenets of Buddhism among those in England. However, he soon finds himself as a shopkeeper in the Limehouse district of London, spending his days smoking opium. His only joy comes from seeing the young Lucy pass by his store. Despite her ragged clothes, Cheng sees her inner beauty and admires from afar.
Lucy lives a difficult life herself. She is the daughter of a prize fighter, Battlin' Burrows, who thinks nothing of taking out his aggressions on the girl. So miserable is Lucy that she literally must grab the corners of her mouth to force a smile.
After one particularly violent attack by her father, Lucy wanders from her home and collapses in Cheng's doorway. The former missionary takes the girl in and cares for her. Though clearly smitten, he never takes advantage. Can the two find love? And what will happen when Battlin' Burrows learns his daughter is with a foreigner?
Broken Blossoms seems like almost an experiment in movie-making from D.W. Griffith. Can he take the techniques he used to tell the massive, epic stories in Intolerance and The Birth of a Nation to not only tell a much more intimate tale, but to make that story feel just as epic?
On this count, the movie almost entirely succeeds and even surpasses his earlier work. The final act of the film is assembled into a dizzying array of close-ups, medium and long shots that feel very modern in their editing. Toward the end, Griffith intercuts between Battlin's boxing match and a tender moment between Lucy and Cheng. The impact gives Lucy's scene even more tension as the action in both the ring and Cheng's apartment build.
The three main leads are fantastic. Gish brings a melancholy to the performance that no other actress could have matched. In the end, as she tries to hide from her father, her terror becomes crazed beyond anything I have seen before. You believe she is in fear for her life. Barthelmess brings a dignity and nobility to his role and Crisp is menacing as the brutish antagonist.
None of that is to say the film is perfect. There are moments that become tedious, particularly in the second act as Cheng cares for Lucy. Although we are told she was with Cheng for only one night, the events of the film made it seem to stretch longer than that.
The other major flaw from a modern perspective is the treatment of the "yellow man" in the film. While it's easier to look past the derogatory references to the minority characters as indicative of the times, having a white actor play Cheng was distracting. In order to look Chinese, Barthelmess walks through the film with his eyes half-closed and his eyebrows pointing up. He never struck me as Asian as much as he did sleepy.
Unlike the problems of racism in The Birth of a Nation, which structured its story as an argument for racism, the treatment of the Chinese is a minor quibble in what is an otherwise great film. Definitely recommend.
****1/2 out of *****
Watched on Netflix Watch Instantly (also available at the Internet Archive)
Photo from Another Nickel in the Machine
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