Broken Blossoms (1919)

Cautiously Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Original Title: Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl

Director: D.W. Griffith

Writers: D.W. Griffith, Thomas Burke

Cinematographer: G.W. Bitzer

Cast: Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess, Donald Crisp, Arthur Howard, Edward Peil, George Beranger, Norman Selby

A teenage waif, who’d known only a loveless life of neglect and battery at the hands of her barbaric boxer father, finds the merest glimpse of hope for a better future when she meets a kindly young Chinese immigrant, who’d come to the country to spread the peaceful ways of Buddha, but who had instead succumbed to drugs and gambling, in Griffith’s gentle, lyrical adaptation of Burke’s short story, The Chink and the Child (1917), which is let down somewhat by some rather broad stereotypes. Iain.Stott