Item #: 3802 Category: SILENT Format: VHS MPAA Rating: PG

Woolly Rating: 5/10 (169 votes)

MEMBER COMMENTS ON THIS VIDEO

jd	May 27, 2004 @ 19:19:16

<[:-} farewell "white blossom"
MOST HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!! this pitch black, violent, censor baiting, deceptively titled 1919 d.w. griffith anti-bigotry, anti-war, anti-nationalism film has to be seen to be believed. richard barthelmess, who would go on make a star career in "socially conscious" movies during the "pre-code" years, plays an idealistic chinese buddhist who emigrates to london to "teach the ways of peace." we next see him broken, disillusioned, smoking opium amidst fellow chinese tokers and european prostitutes in a "scarlet house of sin" in the limehouse slum district. its almost certainly griffith's fault that the young barthelmess' performance here is so demented. he does a freak out scene near the end that could be used in film class to illustrate "over the top," but is still so sincere that it defied even my maggot infested soul to giggle at. lillian gish plays "lucy," the waif like daughter of sadistic drunkard, john, and professional boxer "battling burrows" (donald crisp). "fifteen years before, one of battling's girls thrust into his arms a bundle of white rags." gish's performance here is astounding. she spends a large part of the movie is such sickening distress that the movie might earn an "r" today. we first see her tottering around, and later learn that she habitually is beaten so badly that it is painful for her to walk. certainly desperate to escape her father's house, lucy is warned not to marry by a haggard housewife cooking over an open fire inside a one room hovel crowded with a husband and several children. two streetwalkers warn her just as strongly to avoid their profession. one protracted scene, which most probably inspired the "here's johnny!" scene in "the shining," is about as cruel as it gets. before watching this film and "night of the hunter," i didn't understand what the cult of gish was all about. now, i'm a life-long member. crisp's performance is even more demented than barthelmess'. he has a jim carrey type rubber face, able to pull one side of his mouth up and the other side down simultaneously in a cartoonish thug's grimace. i can't help describing one scene. lucy begs battling "don't do it daddy! - you'll hit me once to often and then they'll - they'll hang yer." dropping to her knees, she wipes the dust off his boot with the hem of her dress (suggestive of fellatio) but he still beats her with the horsewhip he keeps handy under her mattress. he leaves her unconscious to go out for another night of whiskey and prostitutes. later, lucy gets up and staggers aimlessly until she falls into barthelmess' shop. barthelmess' (whose character is known only as "the yellow man") is seen staggering home "with perhaps a whiff of the lilied pipe still in his brain." stoned, he sits down and gazes at her curiously, thinking she's a dream. startled awake, he rubs his eyes with the backs of his wrists. he cleans the cut on her upper arm through the tear in her dress. he almost kisses her on the lips but stops short when he sees she is afraid. (a later scene of lucy cuddling a doll against her face effectively underscores her stunted emotional fragility.) he carries her upstairs to his bed and gives her an elaborate robe to wear. she is seen unfastening her dress, preparing to change in front of him. he turns his head. the intertitle reads "blue and yellow silk caressing white skin." later, gish takes the robe off on camera, but she's wearing a slip, one of a very few unrealistic notes in this grimy, gritty film set in an actual slum, along with sheets and other white cloth are much too clean. predictably, this situation leads to climactic violence and madness, the intensity of which will shock anyone who has the usual expectations about "silent movies." all this is framed in the context of the horror of wwi. near the end a cop reading a newspaper remarks "better than last week. only forty thousand casualties." one cautionary note: though this film was made with the best of intentions, the frequent use of the word "chink" would insure an "r" rating, especially in light of the infamy of griffith's "birth of a nation." all in all though, i'd expect renters like kevin rayburn who like their psychotronia packaged in excellent films to really enjoy this one.

Essential Griffith & Gish
As always, JD's review provides further insights into a film I thought I had "gotten." I saw this flick a few years back, and I'm only just now discovering JD's 2004-penned Wild & Woolly review of it. (A VHS of the movie had been sitting in my collection unwatched for about a decade before I finally got to it about 4 years ago). There's nothing more I can add to JD's assessment. This and 1920's "Way Down East" (also by Griffith) contain the quintessential Lillian Gish performances. In the latter (alas, not available at W&W) she's again the woman of travail, and the scene where her baby dies is one of the most devastating in silent cinema. "Broken Blossoms" is one of the several DWG apologias for "Birth of a Nation," and while Richard Barthelmess's "yellow man" is presented as a very sympathetic character, the unwritten law of forbidden race mixing of the period ensures that pasty white Gish's 'love' for him will remain platonic. In many ways, this is Griffith's 'artiest" movie, full of diffuse, gauzy shots, including some beautifully tinted and toned 'dream' images harkening back to the yellow man's native land of China. The good intentions and the lovely execution, as well as the uncompromising nature of the brutality, make the melodramatic story arc and posturing more palatable. The film was one of many of the period, roughly from the end of WWI through the mid-20s, that trafficked in a general faddish fascination in the West with all things 'Oriental.' Another acclaimed Gish performance was 1926's "The Scarlet Letter,' which some still say is the best adaptation of the Hawthorne classic. Gish had to persuade the nation's clergy that the subject would be tastefully handled; and she succeeded--a must before MGM would proceed with the project. I've gotten hold of a copy of this and plan to view it soon. Get in touch with me JD if you're interested in seeing it. *** Broken Blossoms (1919) reviewed 2006 Kevin Rayburn

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