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Broken Blossoms (1918)
An ambitious little story from the man who had made so many big ones, but it lags due to its casting and the resulting acting. It is hard to take Griffith's message on the acceptance and tolerance of all people regardless of race seriously while his disasterous decision to have Caucasian American actor Richard Barthelmess lingers over the production; here is an actor who spends all his energy squinting his eyes as tight as he can and walking around stiff as a board, and because of this there is no depth to the performance at all. The performance, besides being racist, is dissapointingly dull and theatrical, a shame especially when the character was one who could have been beautifully fleshed out with a real Asian actor. Setting aside this element, though, there is no denying the geniousness of Griffith's storytelling. He is a master of his craft, a technician as well as an artist, and every shot is a unique piece of a poetic composition. While other so-called filmmakers were still tinkering around with the idea of the moving picture, this man had already mastered the idea of space and time and their representations on celluloid (as was evident by his two previous successes) and was now using that ability to create an auterist's rhythm; by harnessing the images of memory and simultaneous action Griffith carefully ensures that his film is truly a moving one, full of life and hypnotic vision.An ambitious little story from the man who had made so many big ones, but it lags due to its casting and the resulting acting. It is hard to take Griffith's message on the acceptance and tolerance of all people regardless of race seriously while his disasterous decision to have Caucasian American actor Richard Barthelmess lingers over the production; here is an actor who spends all his energy squinting his eyes as tight as he can and walking around stiff as a board, and because of this there is no depth to the performance at all. The performance, besides being racist, is dissapointingly dull and theatrical, a shame especially when the character was one who could have been beautifully fleshed out with a real asian actor. Setting aside this element, though, there is no denying the geniousness of Griffith's storytelling. He is a master of his craft, a technician as well as an artist, and every shot is a unique piece of a poetic composition. While other so-called filmmakers were still tinkering around with the idea of the moving picture, this man had already mastered the idea of space and time and their representations on celluloid (as was evident by his two previous successes) and was now using that ability to create an auterist's rhythm; by harnessing the images of memory and simultaneous action Griffith carefully ensures that his film is truly a moving one, full of life and hypnotic vision.
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