Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl (1919)

Director:

D.W. Griffith

Writers:

Thomas Burke (story)
D.W. Griffith (writer)

Release Date:

1922 (Poland)

Genre:

Drama | Romance

Plot:

A frail waif, abused by her brutish boxer father in London's seedy Limehouse District, is befriended by a sensitive Chinese immigrant with tragic consequences.

Plot Keywords:

Father | Limehouse | Boxer | Chinese | Storekeeper

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Lillian Gish	...	Lucy Burrows (as Miss Lillian Gish)
Richard Barthelmess	...	Cheng Huan (as Mr. Richard Barthelmess)
Donald Crisp	...	Battling Burrows
Arthur Howard	...	Burrows' manager
Edward Peil Sr.	...	Evil Eye (as Edward Peil)
George Beranger	...	The Spying One
Norman Selby	...	A prizefighter

Also Known As:

Broken Blossoms (USA) (short title)
Scarlet Blossoms
The Chink and the Child

Runtime:

90 min

Country:

USA

Color:

Black and White (tinted screen)

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Silent

Certification:

Australia:M | UK:15

Filming Locations:

Fine Arts Studios - 4516 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

D.W. Griffith Productions

Trivia:

The film's premiere engagement included a live prologue featuring a dance routine performed by actress' Carol Dempster'. During Dempster's dance the stage was illuminated by blue and gold footlights. Later, during the screening of the film, a stagehand accidentally switched on the blue and gold footlights used during Dempster's dance, and the lights cast upon the movie screen tinted the film in an unusual way. D.W. Griffith, standing in the rear of the auditorium, was so surprised and delighted at the blue and gold-tinted effect of the footlights on his movie that he ordered all copies of Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl (1919) tinted in those colors during certain key sequences.

Goofs:

Continuity: During the boxing scene, when the two fighters enter the ring; Battling is wearing his robe in one shot, and in the next shot it is off.

Quotes:

Lucy Burrows: [when her father father discovers her in the Chinaman's room] 'Taint nothin' wrong! 'Taint nothin' wrong! I fell down in the doorway and wasn't nothin' wrong!

Movie Connections:

Referenced in The Shining (1980)

Personally the best ever silent movie, completed in 1983

This has been one of my all-time favourite films since I taped it off UK Channel 4 1st October 1988 on its second showing, one to savour and revel in every few years. There really is no choice: the only version worth seeing is this one, the Brownlow & Gill UK remaster with Louis F. Gottchalk's themes lushly orchestrated by David Cullen and Carl Davis and the Thames Silents Orchestra. From a good silent film Broken Blossoms is beautifully transformed into a work of Art, the merger of the music and Billy Bitzer's visuals can be so striking. And the intelligent tinting was gorgeous too. Over the years I've even played it just for the music sometimes!

The story? Depressed Chinese ex-missionary in London falls under the spell of listless poverty-stricken beautiful white 15 yo daughter of violent boxer. The crafty and base whites think the worst, but we know that the yellow man's love remained pure - even his worst foe says this ... I know that most people today would hoot at the acting abilities displayed: Lillian Gish's pathetic submissiveness, Donald Crisp's over the top savage expressions and Richard Barthelmess's determinedly serious inscrutability, but appreciation of silent melodramas as a genre is really required rather than simply selecting just one film to watch, such as this. And then again some people have to get over a white man playing a Chinese man whilst simultaneously approving of miscegenation in these much more enlightened times! Would these same people be bothered if a Chinese played a white man? Along with Birth of a Nation and Intolerance, this was Griffiths' best work, pinnacles of the cinema.

Utterly spellbinding poetic stuff for the enlightened, dreadful if your favourites are cgi-riddled and no older than 6 months. And don't expect a remotely happy ending! The beauty that all the world missed smote him to the heart (paraphrase).