Broken Blossoms
IMDb RATING
7.3/10
10K
YOUR RATING
A frail waif, abused by her brutal boxer father in London's seedy Limehouse District, is befriended by a sensitive Chinese immigrant with tragic consequences.A frail waif, abused by her brutal boxer father in London's seedy Limehouse District, is befriended by a sensitive Chinese immigrant with tragic consequences.A frail waif, abused by her brutal boxer father in London's seedy Limehouse District, is befriended by a sensitive Chinese immigrant with tragic consequences.
IMDb RATING
7.3/10
10K
YOUR RATING
- Director
- D.W. Griffith(under the personal direction of)
- Writers
- Thomas Burke(adapted from 'The Chink and the Child' by)
- D.W. Griffith
- Stars
Top credits
- Director
- D.W. Griffith(under the personal direction of)
- Writers
- Thomas Burke(adapted from 'The Chink and the Child' by)
- D.W. Griffith
- Stars
- Awards
- 1 win
Edward Peil Sr.
- Evil Eyeas Evil Eye
- (as Edward Peil)
Fred Hamer
- Secondary Roleas Secondary Role
- (uncredited)
Wilbur Higby
- London Policemanas London Policeman
- (uncredited)
Man-Ching Kwan
- Buddhist Monkas Buddhist Monk
- (uncredited)
Bobbie Mack
- Ringside Employeeas Ringside Employee
- (uncredited)
Steve Murphy
- Fight Spectatoras Fight Spectator
- (uncredited)
Bessie Wong
- Girl in Chinaas Girl in China
- (uncredited)
- Director
- D.W. Griffith(under the personal direction of)
- Writers
- Thomas Burke(adapted from 'The Chink and the Child' by)
- D.W. Griffith
- All cast & crew
- See more cast details at IMDbPro
Storyline
Cheng Huan is a missionary whose goal is to bring the teachings of peace by Buddha to the civilized Anglo-Saxons. Upon landing in England, he is quickly disillusioned by the intolerance and apathy of the country. He becomes a storekeeper of a small shop. Out his window, he sees the young Lucy Burrows. She is regularly beaten by her prizefighter father, underfed and wears ragged clothes. Even in this deplorable condition, Cheng can see that she is a priceless beauty and he falls in love with her from afar. On the day that she passes out in front of his store, he takes her in and cares for her. With nothing but love in his heart, he dresses her in silks and provides food for her. Still weak, she stays in his shop that night and all that Cheng does is watch over her. The peace and happiness that he sees last only until Battling Burrows finds out that his daughter is with a foreigner. —Tony Fontana <tony.fontana@spacebbs.com>
- Taglines
- tonight- you can enjoy the mystic throb of foreign souls; the flame, the fright, the glory of wondrous scenes. (Print Ad- Bismarck Daily Tribune, ((Bismarck ND)) 19 February 1920)
- Genres
- Certificate
- Not Rated
- Parents guide
Did you know
- TriviaCheng Huan is so saintly because D.W. Griffith knew there was a lot of Sinophobia in the US, and audiences would have trouble accepting a Chinese hero. In the original short story, Cheng Huan is just a guy who joined the Chinese merchant marines when he got into debt, grew tired of shipboard life and ended up in Limehouse, a multi-cultural port district in the poor section of London. He was never a Buddhist missionary or a pacifist, and fell just short of being a statutory rapist (albeit, he really loved Lucy); another part of rehabilitating his character was to change Lucy's age from 12 to 16. The audience is not supposed to think they had a sexual relationship, but if people played that out in their heads, it wasn't illegal (unless it was under US miscegenation laws, but Griffith kept the London setting). Anyway, it wasn't child-rape. In the original story, the only way in which Cheng Huan is morally superior to anyone else is his ahead-of-its-time compassion for Lucy. Griffith's personal copy of "Limehouse Nights", the book with the short story "The Chink and the Child"--on which this film is based--with all his screen writing marginal notes, still exists, in a rare book collection at the Lilly Library on the campus of Indiana University, along with a manuscript copy of the story by the author, with comments by Griffith and Lillian Gish.
- GoofsThe intertitles state, "The Buddha says, 'What thou dost not want others to do thee, do thou not to others.'" It was actually not the Buddha but Confucius' teaching.
- Quotes
Narrator: The Yellow Man holds a great dream to take the glorious message of peace to the barbarous Anglo-Saxons, sons of turmoil and strife.
- ConnectionsFeatured in The Philco Television Playhouse: The Birth of the Movies (1951)
Top review
One of film's first interracial love stories
Lillian Gish is pretty compelling playing a teenager in this film, with her angelic face and magnetic eyes showing such haunting fragility. The scenes of a brutal whipping she gets at the hands of her abusive father (Donald Crisp) and his taking an axe to the closet she's hiding in are horrifying. Director D.W. Griffith gives us such an atmosphere of squalor and fog in London that the scene of innocent tenderness with a Chinese immigrant (Richard Barthelmess, argh) comes as a nice contrast. He's protected her on the street and shown her some simple kindness, and the intertitle which reads "Blue and yellow silk caressing white skin - her beauty so long hidden shines out like a poem" is one of the few lovely moments in an otherwise rather depressing film.
Unfortunately the film has a few distasteful elements, not the least of which is casting Barthelmess in the role of Cheng Huan, and then referring to him as the Yellow Man, Chink, and Chinky. He also acts the part poorly, maybe giving us a portrait of a gentle soul, yes, but the way he moves around, emotes, and leans in to kiss Gish is generally weird and creepy. There were laws against interracial relations so it's understandable the film didn't go there, and the character could be justified in his hesitance for a lot of reasons: he knows the laws against miscegenation, he knows she's only 15 (he does give her a doll after all), he's been steeped in Buddhism, or he's just a kind person who doesn't want to take advantage of her. His love does seem on a higher plane, and it's pretty sweet. The worst moment was when he approaches her a second time, and Gish recoils with a look of disgust on her face that seems to mean only one thing. We also see Cheng Huan in an opium den while depressed early on.
While the film includes some of the stereotypes of the day, what it was telling mainstream audiences was something positive, that an Asian man may be living by a religious code with tenets similar to their own (the Buddhist quote early on being a variant of Christianity's Golden Rule), that he might fall in love just as anyone else might, and that he might act bravely and be a hero, rather than preying on a vulnerable white girl. I also loved the criticism of xenophobia in this intertitle: "Above all, Battling (the abusive father character) hates those not born in the same great country as himself." The film was among the first to show an interracial love story which was pretty daring for the fledgling United Artists, and it's interesting to think about it relative to films which would follow, e.g. Piccadilly (1929) and The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933).
Unfortunately the film has a few distasteful elements, not the least of which is casting Barthelmess in the role of Cheng Huan, and then referring to him as the Yellow Man, Chink, and Chinky. He also acts the part poorly, maybe giving us a portrait of a gentle soul, yes, but the way he moves around, emotes, and leans in to kiss Gish is generally weird and creepy. There were laws against interracial relations so it's understandable the film didn't go there, and the character could be justified in his hesitance for a lot of reasons: he knows the laws against miscegenation, he knows she's only 15 (he does give her a doll after all), he's been steeped in Buddhism, or he's just a kind person who doesn't want to take advantage of her. His love does seem on a higher plane, and it's pretty sweet. The worst moment was when he approaches her a second time, and Gish recoils with a look of disgust on her face that seems to mean only one thing. We also see Cheng Huan in an opium den while depressed early on.
While the film includes some of the stereotypes of the day, what it was telling mainstream audiences was something positive, that an Asian man may be living by a religious code with tenets similar to their own (the Buddhist quote early on being a variant of Christianity's Golden Rule), that he might fall in love just as anyone else might, and that he might act bravely and be a hero, rather than preying on a vulnerable white girl. I also loved the criticism of xenophobia in this intertitle: "Above all, Battling (the abusive father character) hates those not born in the same great country as himself." The film was among the first to show an interracial love story which was pretty daring for the fledgling United Artists, and it's interesting to think about it relative to films which would follow, e.g. Piccadilly (1929) and The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933).
helpful•20
- gbill-74877
- Sep 7, 2019
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- Also known as
- Broken Blossoms or the Yellow Man and the Girl
- Filming locations
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $88,000 (estimated)
- Runtime1 hour 30 minutes
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
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Top Gap
By what name was Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl (1919) officially released in Canada in English?
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