New-York tribune., 1919-05-25
The Best of Griffith
s IN 'sBr0ken Blossoms -

10 the Chlnaman. he hides his little
goddess in his loft, which he trans
forms into temple with all the bes.
his stock affords; feeds her, nurses
her, bathes her wounds, wraps her in
embroidered silk, decks her with
Chinese headdresses of flowers and.
careful to treat her always as a little
girl, teaches her what it is to smile
heaven has come to the child So in
the temple loft these two humble and
gentle souls, without harm in them.
escape while to a meek happiness.
Then the fathers discovery of what
he can understand only as "daughter
of his taking up with dirty Chink"
requires him to avenge his family and
racial honor, and this costs all three
lives. 1t Is in that temple which the
father has smashed to bits that the
Chlnaman arranges in seemliness the
broken body Of his little goddess and
once more makes her fair in silks and
flowers. After due prayer he seeks his
own death at the foot Of her couch, be-
tore the police can make good their
claim to this Chinese murderer and
abductor, now safe and far as the girl
once more in China, that the priest
still strikes the sacred bell, and going
east and going west along the misty
River of Soule, the ships still pass
each other in the night. Hereafter, in
q better world than this
NOvr 81;
story of torture, murder and suicide,
enlivened only by prizefight- a
prizefght, mind you, where the wrong
man wins!-should have the effect of
some flower softly unfolding its slow
sweetness and as softly fading into
nothingness when it's time comes? Why
does this heavyweight of deadly ex-
plos1ves strike us as something frail
and fine, of no more bulk than wreath
of wood smoke? Innumerable pictures
have hauled us through every known
orgy Of pain; yet this one remains with
us like a sacrament
Perhaps this is because everything
may be thus transmitted by poetry
and here, with no sordidness or squalor
shirked, is certainly the mood of the
poetic. Griffith and his Bitter have
seen to it that the haunted and haunt
ing magic of the old river side shall
snare our senses with it's brown smoke
stained mystery In q setting and a
photography SO creative that it lets
loose on us at once the whole charm
Iof Y =
seen such a capture Of atmosphere
as this, calling up in its few sets the
whole quaint, rich, grim, story soaked
suggestiveness by which the lower
Thames holds our imagination in an
immemorial net. In this beauty, from
which we never escape, every element
of interpretive beauty is combined
by an unhagging artistic vigilance, so
that where visual beauty must not be
forced it is the more reinforced by
beauty of execution. The acting by
Lillian Gish and Richard Barthelmess
of the two most exacting parts is so
woven within the picture, repeating in
its apparent monotone its myriad re-
Elections of variety and suggestion.
that 1T seems murderous to tear it out
and praise it; even the girls fearfully
realized passion of terror somehow
does not break the web. And see how
large a part of all this exquisite ex-
pressiveness comes from the rigidity,
the scant and meagre movements, of
those subdued, propitiating souls.
Compare their inhibited, mouselke
motions with the beautiful free sweep
of the boys arm with which, when
all Is lost, he strikes his own death
blow, and see what story of release
that tells See the effect Of using for
the Oriental temple in the loft the
same radiance of color which we had
In China, thus setting it off from the
brown slums like fairyland, and then,
by the poignant loveliness of the scenes
therein, making the slums unreal and
fairyland the reality So that when,
even in death, these children come
home to their real fairyland again, we
feel all must be we'll. From end to
end this is the only alienation Grf-
fifth useA
The picture offers, however, anoth-
er and deeper consolation: the deep
humanity in which it has been con-
ceived. It's horrors are not shown for
their own sake, but for the sweetness
enduring in their midst; the tender
and lowly virtue that is ridden down
by the black brute beasts of prejudice
! and cruelty remains unsullied and un-
corrupted by them; in this picture,
which might be called in Maeterlinck's
phrase, "The Treasure Of the Humble"
we feel for its living persistence, and
there arises in US an immense desire
TO behave, while yet we may, as we'll
as possible; to kill in ourselves the
least infection of Battling Burrows
and to bring ourselves as near as may
be to the high decency Of the Chink
and the Child. There is a line In
Frederick Hudson" which has always
seemed to us the trucst salutation to
fine and human art, and it best ex-
presses the mood in which Broken
Blossoms" leaves US: 1--WE ugly NOR
tails. what beautiful creatures we are!"
Jerome Kern