BROKEN BLOSSOMS
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
This 1919 D.W. Griffith silent movie is now 100 years old – and getting a very rare prime-time showcase from TCM. Unlike many epic films by this director, Broken Blossoms is an intimate story on a small scale, centered on only three characters: a young girl, the boxer father who beats her, and the friendly Chinese man who befriends her. The film is a drama opposing prejudice, with audiences meant to empathize with the Chinese immigrant, but in the telling of this tale cinematically, there are lots of elements to excuse or overlook. One is that the girl, who’s supposed to be 12 to 15 years old, is portrayed by Lilliam Gish, then in her 20s and one of silent cinema’s first true shining stars. Another is that Cheng Huan, also known in the film as The Yellow Man, is played by a white actor, Richard Barthelmess. (Donald Crisp completes the starring trio as the boxer and abusive parent, Battling Burrows.) Oh, and to show how times and sensitivities have changed, the original title of Broken Blossoms was The Yellow Man and the Girl.And finally, it should be noted that the screenplay, written by Griffith and Thomas Burke, was based on Burke’s story, which had an even less enlightened, though more alliterative title: The Chink and the Child.