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When Lillian Gish was cast in “Broken Blossoms,” she told D.W. Griffith that she was too old for the role, but quite possibly, she wasn’t. She was born in 1896, so when Griffith got ready for the production in 1919, she was 23. She certainly was not as slim as the audience remembered her to be after “The Birth of a Nation” was filmed five years earlier. However, Griffith needed a star, and boy did Gish deliver. It is shocking to note that in an era where silent actors were working tirelessly, Gish was an astounding 64 films deep.
While it is noteworthy to mention, it does not hold the same gravity as “Birth of a Nation”, but this film does attempt to inflict some form of critique: stung by disapprovals that the second half of his masterpiece was racist due to the romanticization of the Ku Klux Klan and its violent depictions of black people, “Intolerance” (1916) tried to tackle issues Griffith viewed as discriminatory. In “Broken Blossoms”, Griffith paints what can quite possibly be the first interracial love story depicted in films. Although the romance, guaranteed, is an idealized concept with no physical contact, it is still evident.
Gish plays Lucy, the daughter of a London prizefighter named Battling Burrows (Donald Crisp). The titles tell us she was “thrust into his hands by one of his girls.” A drunken “gorilla,” he resides in a hovel in Limehouse, and when his manager scolds him for his constant drinking and carousing, he shifts the rage towards Lucy. Their story is interspersed with that of Cheng Haun (Richard Barthelmess), a Buddhist who, as the titles put it, is “Yellow Man” and who travels from China to bring “a message of peace to the barbarous Anglo-Saxons.” Instead, he becomes addicted to opium, and “Limehouse knows him only as the Chink storekeeper.”
Griffith shot the movie almost completely indoors or on set, creating a foggy riverbank surround to imply different lives. Cheng’s room is an upstairs quarters above his resturant which acts as a hideaway. Lucy and Battling reside in a cell with no light, where he sits at a table gorging himself with food and drink while she shinks back into a dark corner. When he commands her to smile, she is forced to lift the corners of her mouth with her fingers.
She swaps out her precious stash of tinfoil for a flower and does the rest of the shopping, while he spends the rest of the money Lucy brings him for drink. On the other side of the coin, tired housewives and whores prevent her from ever marrying, thus closing the doors to what limited escapes she has. He considers her an “beauty which all Limehouse missed” and sees her through his shop window.
The latter part of the day, Lucy scalds Battling’s hand with food and ends up eating the fist almost to death, with him first knocking her round before leaving for the pub. After her stupor, the Chinese walks into his shop and he has “the first gentleness she has ever known” so offered her shelter. She unpleasantly covers her face with hands in pity for the man, but is able to smile without them. Violence breaks out and Battling Burrows definintely loses the fight after Lucy is captured in a room, with him wrecking the door with an axe, to whirling around in a circle shrieking.
Gish was one of the great vulnerable silent screamers, although she also had a nice streak of true grit and self-sufficiency. In a career that spanned until “The Whales of August” (1987), she portrayed dozens of strong women. In this film she is to a great extent the passive subject of a masculine fantasy–that of Battling, who regards her as a servant and a victim, and Cheng, who worshipfully calls her “My White Blossom.” Griffith makes much of her sweet face and passiveness by lighting and photographing her from above, and years later, while filming Robert Altman’s “A Wedding” (1978), I heard her tell off a cameraman attempting a low-angle shot: “Get up from there! Get up! If God wanted you to see me from that angle, he would have put a camera in your bellybutton. Mr. Griffith always said, ‘When you photograph below for an angel, shoot from above, and when it is a devil, you shoot from below.’” \n\nThe racial views of Gish portrayed in “Broken Blossoms” certainly lacks the ignorant negativity present in “Birth of a Nation,” but even so, in today’s context, they are still incredibly antiquated. But, then again, it is.【220】
In 1919, Interracial marriage was considered illegal which explains why we see Cheng face right next to Lucy’s as he is slowly trying to kiss her but shyly pulling back at the same time. As the subtitles softly inform us, Cheng has pure intentions. Battling, of course, thinks the Yellow Man has had his way, but the girl cries out, “T’ain’t nothing wrong!” Griffith captivates his audience with the thought of exotic intercourse, and then returns to moralizing titles.
The discrimination of the Chinese character starts with a Caucasian being cast. In silent movies, there were quite a few Asian actors, yet only Sessue Hayakawa was given major roles whereas white actors portrayed the most notable early Asian characters. The character of Cheng is a compilation of stereotypes: He is a practicing Buddhist, a pacifist, and an opium addicted shopkeeper. However, Griffith’s film was relatively open-minded and liberal compared to other works at his time, and we feel the decent intent obscured by benevolent phrases like the title Cheng receives from a Buddhist priest before he sets out to travel, “word for word, such as a fond parent of our own land might give.”
For many spectators, “Broken Blossoms” is a form of stale melodrama as a reminder of the past. The best thing about silent comedy is that anything can still be considered timeless; however, great portions of the film have not aged well. In order to appreciate it, you need to sympathize actively or through collaboration. People have to remember just how foreign those narratives were, and how much the waif like figures and gloomy streets of Limehouse once captivated audiences.
To comprehend the film’s original impact, it might help to analyze a comparison with “La Strada” (1954) by Fellini. Pauline Kael claims that many of Federicos’s inspirations come from “Broken Blossoms” such as Zampano the strongman (Anthony Quinn) whose get-up even looks like Battling Burrows’. Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina) The actress who plays his long-suffering associate clearly takes from Lucy, and Basehart’s Matto, who protects her from the savage and gives her shelter, serves the same purpose as the Yellow Man.
Griffith had the status of the unrivaled monarch of serious American cinema as of 1919 after only C.B. DeMille rivaled him in fame. He was regarded as the showman, and “Broken Blossoms” positive but rather controversial. Artistry in production, Lillian Gish’s gossamer beauty, the melodramatic flavors, and the emotions from the sophisticated set captured within the movie. The budget of the film was estimated to be more than that of “Birth of a Nation.”
All of that aside, there is still Lillian Gish’s face. Was she the greatest actress of the silent films? Perhaps; just like I think of Chaplin and Keaton for the men, Gish is the first silent actress that comes to my mind. Another legend, Bette Davis, was her co-star when she filmed “The Whales of August” during 1987. Lindsay Anderson, the film’s director, told me this story. “Miss Gish, you have just given me the most marvelous closeup!” he said to her one day after completing a shot. “She should,” Bette Davis dryly remarked. “She invented them.”
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