United States, 1919
Directed by David Wark Griffith
With Richard Barthelmess (the yellow man), Lilian Gish (Lucy Borrows), Donald Crisp (Battling Borrows)
So melodrama is a vision of the world which is a stark and forceful examination of a prejudiced society shaped by blunt social, racial, and gender delineations locking up the unlucky people targeted by the prejudice even as they yearn for respect and hope. Women are a privileged audience for a genre which often addresses their daily pains and personal aspirations but melodrama can broach even wider issues. It does the job with often a moralizing intent, a desire to preach morality that often caters to those already convinced of the relevance of the ideas that are expressed. “Broken Blossoms” is no exception and in fact it is even plainer and blunter than other products of the genre and from this director who relished in crafting melodramas – like the “True Heart Susie” that David Wark Griffith released the same year as “Broken Blossoms”.
The first title cards spell out what is at stake and what is going to happen in unabashedly moralistic terms. Narrative and narration would never stray from this stern and simplistic tone; actually the scenes seem to outdo each other and the purpose defined at the start: eloquence becomes grandiloquence and lyricism lachrymosity in a relentless and outrageous manner. Nuance is dismissed and originality discarded: Griffith is clearly heavy-handed as he vows to expose how feral violence destroys life and beauty.
Boxing may have been fairly popular at the time and viewed as a real opportunity for barely educated and underprivileged men to make it – cinema would often explore this theme, and often on rather pessimistic terms. But in this case hope is forbidden from the very start by the physique and behaviors of the story’ bad guy, boxing champion Battling Borrows (this is a first name that labors the point). He is a vulgar and wild moron stirred by the most basic needs and having few feelings – the first image of the character makes it awfully clear and would never be gainsaid. This is a thoroughly negative image of a boxing champion, and even a fairly disparaging one, likening jocks to animals.
His victim is his own daughter, a fresh embodiment of the unlucky, unhappy, and undesired waif wandering through a harsh environment, in this case a popular neighborhood of London. Her eyes mournful and her body bent, Lucy Borrows cuts a perfectly frail figure that the perennial anger and deep-seated contempt of her father dooms to be always frightful, diminished, and powerless. A caricature of poverty and despair, she barely pretends to have expectations: when she guesses a kind man ready to take her in and to look after her does exist she is amazed and unsure. But she does enjoy the attention poured on her and begins to have another view of herself and her life (that incredible moment when she looks at herself in a mirror after she got new splendid clothes and her hairdo fixed and embellished).
Lucy’s savior, the story’s good guy, is on the face of it an original character. Yes, he is kind, generous, a little shy but still resolute, hard-working but struggling, and of course young and mysterious. But above all he is a foreigner: a Chinese who traveled half the world to bring a message of peace. He was shocked back home to watch Westerners so easily picking up a fight; already deeply religious, he decided to help that other part of the world learn the peace-loving messages of his native land. Instead of gaining an audience, he is forced to eke out a living as a shopkeeper, however. An it is by peering regularly through his shop’s showcase that he noticed the poor young girl, and when she falls at the doorstep, after running away from her house, he seizes the opportunity to help her and at long last to express his pent-up love for her.
But the miracle cannot last. A friend of Battling Borrows finds out by chance the shopkeeper is sheltering the fugitive and he breaks the news to him. The boxer, incensed that a foreigner can support his daughter, rushes to take her back and to punish her; after a horrid spell of whipping and fighting, Lucy died. When the foreigner manages to reach her place, it is too late but he avenges her by shooting at the cruel father. He then carries her to the shop for a wake performed according to his religion’s rituals. Then, he kills himself.
This suicide inspired by love and sorrow stands as the most bitter end possible for this narrative arc: the yellow man has utterly failed to bring peace and even to live in peace. Violence has overwhelmed him and his willingness to love, to help, and to improve life has been crushed by a savage and degenerate force. The girl he loved has been the poignant and tragic symbol of a complete impossibility to sustain hope: she was doom incarnate in a Western world where wealth and progress hide hatred and horror. Amen.
To draw this highly moralistic and pessimistic portrait of a hypocritical and brutal society Griffith profusely uses clichés of Orientalism. The foreigner is held as a model and his encounters with the West loudly hint that something is amiss in our Western ways. Of course a bad apple is thrown in the Chinese community the film describes in London, reminding that it is easy to find bad guys as well as good ones in any society. But the first images of the film, set in Chinese city straight from postcards, indulge in a representation of China that is all kindness and spirituality in a vision that as simplified and safe as the following caricature of the boxer. The love the yellow man feels and showers on Lucy is described by intertitles and anecdotes redolent of a naive and excessive lyricism that fits more lazy clichés than genuine poetry. This notional respect for Chinese culture has limitations: the hero is played by an American actor who has gone a long way to look like a Chinese, with mixed success, and crucially remains unnamed – he is forever just a “yellow man”.
It could be argued that this choice of a foreign element to criticize the Western modernity is still a bold move and shows an ability to grasp cultural differences to force the audience to reflect on their own racial prejudices. The final suicide is definitely evidence that strong, fierce sentiments would always prod humans into action and transcend their failures, whatever circumstances and origins are. It certainly comes as a surprise from the director of “Birth of a Nation” (1915) where racist visions of the African Americans were not a rarity – the yellow man seems to point to personal politics that are not entirely flawed but respectful of differences. Yet the acting and the shooting in “Broken Blossoms” are so outré that the film is barely compelling: the exotic flourishes and the crude portrayal of the characters feel too artificial and convenient.