Broken Blossoms **** (1919, Lillian Gish, Donald Crisp, Richard Barthelmess) – Classic Movie Review 5075

Writer-producer-director D W Griffith’s simple and affecting 1919 silent movie love story is lit up with one of the great Lillian Gish’s most notable performances as Lucy Burrows, a London Limehouse girl who flees from her wicked prizefighter father (Donald Crisp) into the embrace of young Chinese man Cheng Huan (Richard Barthelmess).

Broken Blossoms is beautifully acted and beautifully realised, and it is still highly enjoyable and strangely moving if you allow yourself to get into the Dickensian melodramatics and silent film acting styles.

Griffith’s script is based on the story The Chink and the Child from Thomas Burke’s Limehouse Nights.

It is available on DVD or you can watch free on the Internet Archive (with no music).

https://archive.org/details/Broken.Blossoms

It was remade as a talkie in 1936 in Britain by director John Brahm, starring Dolly Haas, Arthur Margetson, Emlyn Williams and Donald Calthrop.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5075

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