Notes for a class - with questions

D.W. Griffith, Broken Blossoms (1919)

Griffith had been making films for ten years or more. In 1915, he made what is one of the most famous (and infamous) films in history when he made Birth of a Nation. The film uses white actors to play Black men, as Hollywood continued to do with various racial types right up until recently. Broken Blossoms does the same, using white actors to play Chinese people. Birth of a Nation depicts the Black men as ugly and violent. The film was (and continues to be) seen as racist. In 1916, Griffith made the lavish (like a Cecille B. DeMille extravaganza) film, Intolerance (some prints are as long as 208 minutes). This film seems in some way Griffith’s attempt to assuage his guilt for his portrayal of African American people in Birth of a Nation, the way John Ford tried to do something similar when he made Cheyenne Autumn in 1964 as a way of revising his earlier depiction of Native Americans. But Intolerance is both very long and structurally demanding, telling four stories from different historical times simultaneously with a recurring bridging scene of a mother rocking a cradle. Griffith might have thought that to make his point he needed to make a more straight -forward film, something simple such as Broken Blossoms. Did I say “simple”? Well, you know what I mean: the story unfolds sequentially.

Broken Blossoms is a melodrama with oversized villain and pint-sized victim.

Broken Blossoms is obviously about race. The story is reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet, but instead of two families feuding, we have two races. The lovers cannot come together happily precisely because of the intolerance of the society in which they live.

What do you make of the opening scenes in China?

This is a film about broken dreams and aspirations.

This is a film about entrapment. The scene in which Lucy retreats to the closet and cringes as her father hacks away at the door with a hatchet will serve as example (cf Kubrik's The Shining). But the entire shooting style communicates entrapment, from the opening shots inside a monastery, to the closed boxing ring, the soporific house of sin, the claustrophobic shop where the “Yellow Man” works, the short abrupt streets, the house where Lucy and Battling live, the enclosed space of the dock and work yard, the night shooting, the close-ups, the extreme narrowness of the bedroom above the shop. We seem unable to stretch in this film. For the most part, the camera cannot get distance from the actors or the action.

This is a film about love. But I wonder just how this film envisages love. Why does the Chinese man find Lucy attractive? Why does she find him attractive?

This is a film about inner struggle and turmoil. The camera locates much of the “meaning” in body language and, especially, eyes.

This is a film about the loss of innocence, its fragility, and its inevitable failure.

The intensity of such loss is, perhaps, nowhere  more  evident  than in the scene in which Lucy mends her father’s work socks. She does this carefully, and just before she puts the mended socks away, she briefly strokes them. What does this suggest? (See a similar gesture in Ford’s The Searchers)

And what about Battling? His body language more often than not suggests arrogance, anger, violence, and a huge reservoir of frustration. Why, I wonder?

This is a film about xenophobia. I wonder how successful Griffith is in presenting China and Chinese people sympathetically.

Birth of a Nation was technically advanced. Andrew Rausch’s book lists the many innovations this film introduced (see pp.34-35).

Some of these techniques appear in Broken Blossoms: cross-cutting, tinting, close-ups. In fact, we might call Broken Blossoms a film of close-ups. We have many instances of facial close-ups and mid-range close-ups (from torso up). The close-ups serve to intensify the emotional impact of the film.

The film gesture: perhaps the most famous feature of Broken Blossoms is the gesture Lucy (Lillian Gish) makes when her “Daddy” insists that she smile. She places her fingers to her mouth and pulls her lips into a smile. This gesture appears throughout the film, but most significantly in Lucy’s last close-up as she dies. Does this work?

Gesture: we have many instances of signature gestures in film (Bogart pulling on his ear in The Maltese Falcon, Wayne holding his forearm in The Searchers, Woody Allen‘s many ticks and mannerisms and those glasses, Henry Fonda’s play with the chair in My Darling Clementine). Can you think of others? The gesture reminds us of the body. It reminds us of non-verbal communication. It draws our attention to  character. The gesture reminds us of visual cueing. Not only do we have Lucy’s gesture in Broken Blossoms, but we also have Battling’s fists, various smoking apparatuses, and flowers. These serve as visual “symbols” or signs. Each of these signs communicates to the audience. What have I missed in the list below?

1. gesture of forced smile
2. clenched fists
3. flowers (used for various “gestures”)
4. the dolls and the one doll
5. smoking apparatuses
6. feet and foot
7. clothes
8. food
9. streets and sets
10. use of establishing shots (e.g. dark shots of night and ships, or dockside with workers sawing and  doing other things, shots with mist) 

Opening shots establish themes: we see various contrasts, and the film builds on contrasts:

1. children/sailors
2. east/west
3. young (children)/old (merchants)
4. Buddhists (peace)/sailors (rowdy and pugnacious)
5. Buddhist priests/American clergymen missionaries
6. Chinese part of town/dock side 

What do you make of the comment at the end of the film that this day has seen “40,000 casualties”?