Broken Blossoms (1919)

With the progressive abolition of slavery in the New World from the early 1800s, governments of all American countries started to encourage immigration from Europe and Asia so as to supply their expanding economies with labor cheaper than that of the newly freed slaves. The general public, who, at first, more or less tolerated that practice, had become extremely averse to it by the early 20th century, as labor was no longer in short supply and the fear of having jobs taken by immigrants was widespread. Moreover, the then growing Social Darwinist movement, which considered all immigrants to be inferior to the dominant white race and, because of that, predisposed to crime and vice, disseminated the idea that miscegenation would ultimately lead to anarchy, further contributing to the ostracism of immigrants by the societies they had helped to build. As a consequence, those "outsiders" were eventually forbidden by law to marry outside of their race, being either segregated to their own districts or forced into slums. Their situation was made even worse by sensationalist propaganda like Thomas Burke's Limehouse Nights, a collection of biased short stories centered around London's Chinatown, with tales that did nothing but fuel the Yellow Peril hysteria predominant in the Western hemisphere at the time. That book became an enormous success in the US, where the Gold Rush and the West's expanding railroad system had attracted a considerable amount of Chinese immigrants, since long seen with hostility by the local population. At around the same time Burke's book was first published, director D.W. Griffith had just released his latest epic, Intolerance (1916), made partly in response to the intense (and justified) accusations of racism targeted at his masterpiece, the Ku Klux Klan glorifier Birth of a Nation, released a year earlier. Unable to understand that criticism due to his upbringing as a Confederate Colonel's son, Griffith dedicated a substantial portion of this life trying to retaliate: after Intolerance, he turned to one of the short stories in Burke's popular book, charmingly titled The Chink and the Child, to make yet another commentary on the prejudice and bigotry prevailing in society, of which, ironically, he believed to be a victim. Stripped of (most of) its prejudice, that short story then became Broken Blossoms, a not-at-all subtle attack on Griffith's critics turned into a classic mostly for boasting what I believe to be the finest performance in Lillian Gish's career.

Idealistic Chinese missionary Cheng Huan (Richard Barthelmess, referred to only as "The Yellow Man" in the movie's title cards) is making preparations to go to London with the intent of spreading the peaceful message of Buddha in the savage Western world. Upon arriving, however, he is confronted with the harsh reality of his new environment, ultimately settling in the Chinese district of the Limehouse slum, resigning himself to managing his shop in between his visits to the local opium house, where he goes to momentarily forget about his broken dreams. In the same slum lives frail Lucy (Lillian Gish), whom he often watches as she goes by, as hers is a rare beauty only he is able to admire. She lives with her abusive father, boxer Battling Burrows (Donald Crisp), who mistreats her constantly. One night, angry at her for having accidentally burned his hand while serving him dinner, Burrows whips Lucy senseless, leaving shortly after to train for a fight. Barely conscious, Lucy finally runs away from home, wandering aimless in the empty streets of the Limehouse until finally collapsing due to her wounds inside Huan's store. Deeply in love with Lucy, Huan gives her shelter and nurses her back to health. Upon knowing of his daughter's whereabouts and mad with rage at the thought of her having an affair with a "dirty chink", Burrows storms into Huan's house and drags Lucy back home. There, Lucy, terrified, hides in the closet to protect herself, infuriating Burrows even more: he then rips a hole in the door with an ax, pulls her out and whips her to death. Huan, who was away on an errand, comes back home to find his room destroyed and Lucy away. Fearing the worst, he rushes to her house, only to discover her lifeless body lying on a bed. Overtaken by grief, the once peace-loving Huan then fatally shoots Burrows, brings Lucy's body to his apartment and, having the sole light in his bleak life taken away from him, proceeds to kill himself.

Lucy (Lillian Gish) cowering in fear at the sight of the whip
her father (Donald Crisp) is holding, for she had already
felt it on her skin countless times

Despite the roar Broken Blossoms caused upon its release due to its underlying pro-Chinese message given the social context in those days, Griffith makes it crystal clear in one of the first intertitles of the movie that the reason he choose to adapt Burke's The Chink and the Child to the screen was far less noble: his intention was, in fact, to use the vicious character of Battling Burrows to embody all the ones who had been relentlessly attacking him, an innocent man in his own eyes, with the "whip of unkind words and deeds" since the release of Birth of a Nation. Its favorable view of Cheng Huan had, hence, less to do with him boldly denouncing the unfair treatment of Chinese immigrants in his contemporary society, and far more with Huan serving as the extreme counterpart to Burrows' vileness toward his defenseless daughter (perhaps symbolizing Griffith himself?), thus stressing that character's dehumanization in the eyes of his audience. It is not that Griffith was unsympathetic to the issues plaguing Chinese immigrants, nevertheless, as he had already tackled that subject in That Chink at Golden Gulch (1910), in which he tells the story of a kind Chinese man who sacrifices himself for his white friends despite all racism of which he had been a victim; it is just that, this time, he had more important matters to address, that is to say his own "persecution". Griffith still wasn't done with his moral quest after Broken Blossoms, however: he would go on to condemn all "wicked" tongues via the character of Martha Perkins, the town gossip who gladly spreads malicious rumors in Way Down East (1920), as well as to sneak some passive-aggressive intertitles aimed at his attackers in Orphans of the Storm (1921), his last major hit.

Burrows upon finding Lucy in Huan's room

Yet, Broken Blossoms manages to be more than a vehicle for Griffith to retaliate against his critics. In his effort to demoralize Battling Burrows in every conceivable way, Griffith indirectly raised awareness of two issues then considered taboo, viz. miscegenation and the role of women in society, binding them together in a daring scene inside an opium house, in which he depicts several white women casually enjoying the company of non-white men. The former is downplayed in favor of the latter, though, as 1910 audiences were still warming up to actual interracial love stories, with Sidney Olcott's Madame Butterfly (1915) and Sidney Franklin's The Forbidden City (1918) being both somewhat successful at the box office. Alas, no romance between a white woman and a non-white man had even been shown on a mainstream film, with Asian men in particular being largely portrayed as villains (as in, most famously, Cecil B. DeMille's The Cheat - 1915). Griffith manages to circumvent that particular topic altogether by making Lucy grateful to, but not in love with, Huan, as well as by inserting plenty of verbose, saccharine title cards to assure us of his guileless feelings toward her. As a result, the emotions the characters are portraying onscreen are often needlessly explained, as well as, in a crucial scene, blatantly contradicted: while Huan is watching Lucy play with a doll he had just given her, there is a close up of his face from her point of view as he walks toward her, a sinister look in his eyes (much like the one Burrows has in his when he finds her in Huan's bed), Lucy cowering in fear while clutching her doll as he comes closer... just for having us reassured by the tile-cards of how pure and idealistic his love is, as he kisses her sleeve and leaves the room. Even though I am aware that Griffith's intention was to make it clear to his audience that Huan's love for Lucy was strictly platonic, I can't help but feel those maudlin intertitles gloss over that scene, deceitfully shifting it away from what it really depicts, namely a sexually aroused man fighting his inner demons, thus rendering it as a whole narratively pointless. No one, not even Griffith, can have his cake and eat it too...

Cheng Huan (Richard Barthelmess) leaning forward to kiss
Lucy, a gesture of which she, in her childlike innocence,
is oblivious

Cheng Huan, or "The Yellow Man" (a more politically correct term, according to Griffith, for the pejorative "chink") is played by Richard Barthelmess in yellowface, a fact Griffith emphasizes right away when listing the cast of characters for Broken Blossoms, thus cleverly obtaining some instinctive empathy toward Huan from his predominantly white audience (certainly much more than he would have had he cast, say, Sessue Hayakawa in that role). Even though Barthelmess is made to play a couple of corny scenes aimed at reducing the sexual tension between him and Lucy, his reticent performance as Huan is on point whenever he has to show restraint, such as when he meets a Catholic missionary on his way to China to gather sheep to his herd, mirroring his own coming to London to spread Buddhism. Certainly foretelling the fate of that missionary's expedition, his reply is a simple "I - I wish him luck", followed by a long stare off into the distance as he reflects on that missionary's sermon, themed "hell", far different from the message he hoped to spread. His diametrical opposite is the violent Battling Burrows (Donald Crisp), a ruthless, heartless man (much like, according to Griffith, all critics of Birth of a Nation) who was perhaps at the time as hated as the villains played by his contemporary Erich von Stroheim. Nevertheless, the Popeye-like grimace he makes when angry does, specially during close-ups, take away from his evilness, at least for modern audiences. Watching him torment his daughter, tough, is as distressing now as it was 100 years ago, a feat achieved mostly due to the talent of the film's leading lady.

Lucy, who never in her life knew happiness, uses her 
fingers to sculpt a smile on her face whenever her 
father demands it of her

Lillian Gish is, without question, the star of the movie, with a performance that, at least for me, surpasses even her nuanced portrayal of Letty in Victor Sjöström's The Wind (1928), considered her finest. With Broken Blossoms constantly walking the fine line between the melodramatic and the ludicrous, it is Gish who makes the whole story credible. When we are told that she does not know how to smile because she never had a moment of happiness in her life, we believe it the instance we look inside her big, fearful eyes. The scenes in which she has to fabricate a smile with her fingers at her father's request, for instance, could have looked absurd and even comic were they played by a less skilled actresses. Lucy's bitter melodrama is made even more surreal thanks to cinematographers Billy Bitzer and Hendrik Sartov, who pioneered a technique for creating softly-blurred close-ups specifically for her close-ups (maybe to make 23-year-old Gish look younger?). As much as it is heartbreaking to watch her react to her father's whip, while she tries to protect herself cowering in a corner, nothing but terror on her face, her crowning achievement is indeed the scene in which she locks herself in a closet so as to avoid being beaten to death by Burrows, after having been brought back from Huan's house. Having watched her suffer in her father's hands throughout the movie, we can't help but share her panic as he, in rage, starts to break the closet door apart with an ax. We then witness her, a desperate child, screaming frantically, turning around in circles as if subconsciously looking for the way out she knows does not exist, much like a trapped animal facing certain death. It is due to performances like this that, although Mary Pickford was more famous, Colleen Moore was a bigger box office hit, and Clara Bow was the girl who had "it", Gish, much like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, is the one still talked about to this day.

Summarizing it:

Liked	Didn't like
Lillian Gish at her very best	Needlessly verbose (and, in a crucial scene, inconsistent) title-cards

Time hasn't weakened the impact of the infamous closet scene:

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Great Movie review by Roger Ebert here.

If you liked this movie, then maybe try watching anything Lillian Gish stars in from 1915 to 1928.

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