review: broken blossoms (1919)

the shining light of this film has got to be lillian gish's performance of 15-year old lucy. but frankly, the 20-something actress looks like she was only eight. she's such a delicate little thing with HUGE, tearful eyes and frantic little fingers that you just want to take the tiny creature into your arms and cuddle her. ever seen a tiny bird with bent feathers sticking up the wrong way clutching a bare twig in mid-winter? yeah. that's exactly the impression she gives off.

richard barthelmess playing the chinese exile in the london limehouse district manages to catch just the right dose between creepy stalker and gentle guardian who is head over heals with the girl who tumbled into his gift shop more dead than alive. the scenes where he just sits beside her, fearful of himself and torn between his urge to kiss her and his own morals of chaste love are wonderful to watch. he's the creepy stalker-dude who is actually just a nice guy once you understand that he is lucy's guardian angel who wants to shield her from her abusive father. (oi! you hear that, sparkly vampire-dude!?!) his gentleness is perfectly captured when he presents lucy with the two things she finds most beautiful, but which were always out of her reach in her livelong suffering of poverty and cruelty: a flower and a chinese porcelain doll. yeah, barthelmess is the under-dog whom you are rooting for. shame he kills himself at the end.

so in the end, when huan kills lucy's horrendous sod of a father, who has killed her just seconds before, you are totally rooting for the little man. unfortunately, the audience has to wait about 80 minutes for this scene. it's such a damn shame that this film drags on and on and on. the set is just magnificently dirty and credible as the dodgy end of london with its dingy shops and opium dens. but again, i find myself justified for rooting for chaplin's and keaton's films. their cutting is much more to the point. their intertitles are only used when totally neccessary. actually, chaplin made it a point to tell the story with the pictures, not with the help of title cards. yes, in broken blossoms there were scenes that were totally captivating and heart-breaking. but they were few and far between. also, griffith has a tendency to drag out scenes and to repeat them ad nauseam. yeah, i get the point. the father is a brute, lucy is a poor wretch, huan is noble. can we have some story now, please? if chaplin had been handed the rough cut, i am sure, he'd have relieved the film of half of its length.

so, long story short: here's the most captivating scene of the entire film. poor little lucy, captured in a broom cupborad. unfortunately, her great performance is again weakened by the terrible editing:

another unfortunate side-note: griffith was a racist. so that you are warned about some of the intertitles and the horrendously stereotyped hunchbacked performance of the caucasian 'chinamen' in this film.

ok. as the final 'killer'-performance, i give you gish's death scene. if you don't find yourself wiping away a tear, you obviously have no heart...