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Monday, June 29, 2020

BROKEN BLOSSOMS (1919)

While D.W. Griffith’s reputation largely draws from four epic films (BIRTH OF A NATION/’15; INTOLERANCE/’16; WAY DOWN EAST/’20; ORPHANS OF THE STORM/’21), nowadays, it’s only a reputation (or clips & footnotes), as even film history classes pass on one of cinema’s founding fathers thanks to BIRTH’s toxic race elements. Perhaps if we bypassed the spectaculars for something smaller & less controversial, like the pair of modest beauties he made with Lillian Gish in 1919. First out, this visually poetic tragedy with rising leading man Richard Barthelmess; and then the romantic pastorale that followed, TRUE HEART SUSIE (Write-Up below) with waning male ingenue Robert Harron. No two films could be less alike. BLOSSOMS, a horrific idyll about a sensitive Chinese shop owner, Barthelmess in Asian attitude, but no YellowFace (unlike Emlyn Williams in a 1936 remake*), an immigrant living in London’s Limehouse District, his youthful dreams of bringing peace to the heathen masses long lost to opium; and Gish’s motherless girl of twelve, living in squalor, terrified of her abusive, prize-fighting father (Donald Crisp). The acting, languid and heightened in turn, is superb, if very much of its time. So too a painterly production that filters dreamy cityscapes under a thick London fog that hides but can’t stop the violence or keep fate from calling on all three leads when Gish briefly comes under Barthelmess’s protection. Unimaginably beautiful lensing from Billy Bitzer with Karl Brown handling some of the trick miniature river shots.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *YellowFace still in use as late as the 1980s, and not only for comic parody.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned above, TRUE HEART SUSIE/’19.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/02/true-heart-susie-1919.html   ALSO: Good copies online at various youtube addresses, but start with this short intro from Lillian Gish. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kXyyuC02og

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