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Lillian Gish in "Broken Blossom"

Production: D. W. Griffith Inc.; black and white, 35mm, silent; running time: about 95 minutes; length: 6 reels. Released 1919 through United Artists. Filmed December 1918 and January 1919; cost: $88,000.

Broken Blossoms is widely regarded as Griffith's masterpiece, eclipsing even his better known epics. Lillian Gish's masterful performance aside, critics have been especially impressed by the formal sophistication and narrative complexity of Griffith's film. It is, above all, a film marked by terrific compression. The concentration of time and space gives characters, objects, and decor sustained metaphorical power that is never dissipated. Just as skillful is the dramatic structure which gives the impression of simple straightforwardness while camouflaging an intricate intertwining of expository and narrative sequences.

Thematically, the film is perhaps Griffith's most adventurous work. Susan Sontag has called Griffith "an intellect of supreme vulgarity and even inanity," whose work ordinarily reeks of fervid moralizing about sexuality and violence. But in Broken Blossoms he lowers his guard, nearly breaching his cherished Victorian convictions. Activities obviously taboo in The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance—a racially mixed love affair, auto-eroticism, opium eating, sado-masochism, revenge killing—are transformed here into sensually satisfying pastimes that resonate in dangerously nonconformist ways. For once in Griffith's work, racial bigotry is a target for reproach. The few citations to post-war 1919 American culture, far from catering to the rampant xenophobia and mood of self-congratulation, hint at the dark side of American provincialism. The glancing references to munition workers, American sailors, and First World War battles illustrate the west's penchant for self-destructiveness and violence.

Review from filmreference.com