Post by Capo on Jul 27, 2007 17:48:16 GMT
Broken Blossoms
DW Griffith 1919 USA
A Chinese missionary falls for a London girl whose father beats her drunkenly.
A kind of revisionist variation of DeMille's The Cheat[/url] (1915), in which the Oriental is this time the good guy caught in a society of confusion. The ending is brilliantly and refreshingly downbeat, and there's a moment during a boxing match where an otherwise menacing cutway to the Chinaman lingering over Gish turns out to be the subjective imagination of her drunken father. Bitzer's cinematography is atmospheric and impressive, too. What is essentially short film material, though, with (besides the prologue) two interiors, two exteriors and two boxing matches, is stretched unbearably thin over the duration of 90 minutes, and Griffith and his obtrusive intertitles are at their most intolerable. Verbose, testing and not very imaginative it's interesting to note (or lament) how his innovations earlier in his career, and all the experience gained from his years at Biograph served no further ends (at least after Intolerance) than to tell stories with messages via stagelike images.
DW Griffith 1919 USA
A Chinese missionary falls for a London girl whose father beats her drunkenly.
A kind of revisionist variation of DeMille's The Cheat[/url] (1915), in which the Oriental is this time the good guy caught in a society of confusion. The ending is brilliantly and refreshingly downbeat, and there's a moment during a boxing match where an otherwise menacing cutway to the Chinaman lingering over Gish turns out to be the subjective imagination of her drunken father. Bitzer's cinematography is atmospheric and impressive, too. What is essentially short film material, though, with (besides the prologue) two interiors, two exteriors and two boxing matches, is stretched unbearably thin over the duration of 90 minutes, and Griffith and his obtrusive intertitles are at their most intolerable. Verbose, testing and not very imaginative it's interesting to note (or lament) how his innovations earlier in his career, and all the experience gained from his years at Biograph served no further ends (at least after Intolerance) than to tell stories with messages via stagelike images.