Broken Blossoms

2007-02-10 23:18:13

Broken Blossoms (1919, USA, DW Griffith)

Broken Blossoms involves a trio of bleak individuals in a bleak time and in a bleak part of a bleak town. Or as the title may suggest, it is the story of idealistic individuals with promise that are beaten down by their respective realities; blossoms broken before they could bloom. This aptly describes the Yellow Man (as is his name in the film) and Lucy (played superbly by Lillian Gish). The third character is Lucy’s brutish father whose only interest is in maintaining his status as a top prize fighter, drinking and carousing, and keeping his daughter as his live-in cook/maid/all-purpose house slave.

In the opening scenes of the film, we are introduced to the Yellow Man who is a young Buddhist student who wants “to bring peace to the Anglo-Saxons,” but some years later, “he is known only as a Chink shopkeeper” in the Limehouse area of London. The Yellow Man admires Lucy from afar and when given the chance in the end, he dotes on her and defends her honor. There is a scene in the beginning where he seems physically repulsed by even a playful fighting scene between soldiers and at the end, he seems to have come full circle. The title is really quite perfect and easternly so, for here we are presented with 2 people who seem quite lovely but are beaten down by their own respective realities. Lucy can catch glimpses of a life outside being beaten for not having tea earlier than the preset time or a life outside of stitching holey socks for her asshole father. The Yellow Man goes from the serene Buddhist environment of a Chinese temple to a foggy, shadowy city where he whittles time away in an all-things Chinese shop and smoking opium on the side.

The atmosphere of the film is perfectly adapted to the story and its inhabitants. It is a city on the water that seems to be perpetually filled with fog. Somewhere beneath the dense shadows is that flowing elixir of life and hope. Somewhere in the shadows are people hiding from good and bad forces. And like every great tragic love story, we get a glimpse of that love before it is shattered. The Yellow Man takes in a severely beaten Lucy and dresses her in the store’s fine silks and gives her one of the dolls she has been eyeing in the store window. The Yellow Man gets to dote on the object of his affection and Lucy gets some well-deserved loving attention to which she can only ask “What makes you so nice to me Chinky?”

Seen through late 20th century eyes (let’s leave out the 21st), this story is littered with racial stereotypes, a blackface here and a slanty-eyed actor here and there. “The Yellow Man” is a main character who is also referred to as “the Chink” and “Chinky.” And however we may think of all this today and given DW Griffith’s history, Broken Blossoms deals with a subject of interracial love that surely must have been taboo in 1919. Miscegenation was against the law here! So some props must be given for endeavoring to tell this particular love story. The film is well paced, nicely decorated, well shot and above all, it is given a feeling of honesty. Shitty stories may deserve good endings but they usually don’t go hand in hand and the same should go for the world of films.

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