Use the arrows to scroll for more

• Letters To God - Trailer
• Waking Sleeping Beauty - Trailer
• The Ghost Writer - Featurette - Jumping Ship
• Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps - Trailer 2
• Blood Done Sign My Name - Trailer
• Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps - Trailer 1
• When You’re Strange - Trailer
• Chloe - Trailer
• Alice In Wonderland - Featurette
• Vincere - Trailer
• The Eclipse - Clip
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid - Trailer
• The Wolfman - Featurette 2
• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - Trailer 2
• The Exploding Girl - Trailer
• Hot Tub Time Machine - Trailer 2
• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - Trailer
• Toy Story 3 - Trailer 3
• Get Him To the Greek - Trailer 1
• Leaves of Grass - Trailer

Broken Blossoms

Description:
D.W. Griffith was many things: movie innovator, maker of grand statements (The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance being among the biggest of all silent films), the first American superstar director--the Steven Spielberg of his era. Griffith was also very much a conscious artist, a man who did not think of movies as a mere medium for entertainment but as an art form. The mute evidence of this can be found on ample display in Griffith's 1919 drama Broken Blossoms, a tragic and completely uncommercial project that proved to be hugely popular. The director's most favored leading lady, Lillian Gish, plays an adolescent girl in London's rough Limehouse district; abused by her father (Donald Crisp), a crude boxer, she is cared for by a poetic Chinese man (Richard Barthelmess). Gish, who had doubts about playing a child (and was not yet fully recovered from a brush with the deadly Spanish flu epidemic), delivers a magnificent performance. Justly famous for her hysterical meltdown while trapped in a closet, she also brings off the smaller moments: her hesitation while gazing at a flower she can't possibly afford to buy is a heartbreaking piece of pantomime. Griffith's delicacy of touch extends to matters of race, as he clearly sides with the refined man from China, who must endure the prattle of white men boasting about traveling to the Orient and converting "the heathen." Small in scale compared to Griffith's mightier projects, Broken Blossoms is nevertheless one of his most beautiful films, and a landmark of the silent era. --Robert HortonD.W. Griffith was many things: movie innovator, maker of grand statements (The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance being among the biggest of all silent films), the first American superstar director--the Steven Spielberg of his era. Griffith was also very much a conscious artist, a man who did not think of movies as a mere medium for entertainment but as an art form. The mute evidence of this can be found on ample display in Griffith's 1919 drama Broken Blossoms, a tragic and completely uncommercial project that proved to be hugely popular. The director's most favored leading lady, Lillian Gish, plays an adolescent girl in London's rough Limehouse district; abused by her father (Donald Crisp), a crude boxer, she is cared for by a poetic Chinese man (Richard Barthelmess). Gish, who had doubts about playing a child (and was not yet fully recovered from a brush with the deadly Spanish flu epidemic), delivers a magnificent performance. Justly famous for her hysterical meltdown while trapped in a closet, she also brings off the smaller moments: her hesitation while gazing at a flower she can't possibly afford to buy is a heartbreaking piece of pantomime. Griffith's delicacy of touch extends to matters of race, as he clearly sides with the refined man from China, who must endure the prattle of white men boasting about traveling to the Orient and converting "the heathen." Small in scale compared to Griffith's mightier projects, Broken Blossoms is nevertheless one of his most beautiful films, and a landmark of the silent era. --Robert Horton

Rated:  NR

DVD Release Date:  2002-12-10

Film Release Date:  1919

Studio:  Kino Video

Director:

• D.W. Griffith

Genre:  Classics