Broken Blossoms

[osprey_archer]

The hero of D. W. Griffith's film Broken Blossoms isn't actually named Cheng Huan, though that's what the reviews all call him. Cheng Huan is the name of the character's shop. In the film the character is never named; he's always called The Yellow Man, as in the subtitle, "The Yellow Man and the Girl."

You can see why the reviewers might feel a little twitchy calling him that.

Cheng Huan/the Yellow Man is in fact played by a white guy, Richard Barthelmess, whose attempt at looking Chinese consists of keeping his eyes constantly half-lidded. Mostly this makes him look sleepy and lecherous, an expression unfortunately at odds with the purported chastity of his love for Lucy, an abused Cockney lass who collapses on the floor of his curio shop after her brutal father beats her.

The chastity of the romance is problematic: it's so much easier to get behind transgressive romances when the icky sex part is removed, after all. But given the shape of the story, the romance has to be chaste. Lucy collapsed helpless in Cheng's shop. Anything but chastity would be creepy and exploitative under the circumstances.

Because sex - not just interracial sex, but all sex - is icky: this is the bedrock principle on which Broken Blossom rests. If Griffith wanted to make a strong statement in favor of interracial romance he should have picked a different story - but if he wanted to make a strong statement in favor of interracial romance, he would have had to be less horrified by sex.

But sublimating the sex in the romance so thoroughly doesn't make it go away; it just transmutes it into something creepy and voyeuristic. Gentle Cheng is so shocked by beautiful Lucy's injuries that he bustles her up the stairs to his hidden Chinese bower. He settles her on his couch, gives her a Chinese robe thing to replace her torn clothes, and tucks the covers gently around her battered body, accidentally-on-purpose sniffing her hair as he leans in.

I submit that one doesn't rapturously sniff a beautiful girls hair if one's actions are merely a chaste homage to her shiningly beautiful spirit.

The undertones of creepiness are only strengthened by Lucy's alternating ignorance and confused acceptance of his attentions. During the hair-sniffing scene, for instance, Lucy is too busy admiring a Chinese doll he gave her to notice that Cheng is leaning over her like Dracula. Her childlike unawareness, coupled with her childlike delight in the doll, make her seem...well, like a child.

But then there are scenes where Lucy does seem aware of the sexual tension floating through the incense-laden air. Cheng appears by her couch late at night, and looks at her intently. Lucy looks back, confused, a little frightened, but accepting. We know that Cheng doesn't expect Lucy to offer sexual favors in return for his kindness, and would in fact be horrified if she did; but Lucy's so happy that finally someone has been kind to her that she's willing to go along with whatever he wants.

This resigned willingness is sad more than anything; and the movie does recognize that. But it expects viewers to see this as a sweet and romantic kind of sadness, akin the sadness of battered flowers, rather than just plain sad.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Is this an ancient movie? It sounds distinctly non-contemporary.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Yes, from 1920.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Interesting, then, to see exactly *how* it falls flat--the (presumably) unexamined assumptions, etc.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

What's interesting about this movie is that it is an attempt by Griffith to reexamine his attitudes toward race. In 1915 he directed Birth of a Nation, which caused such an outcry that he made two movies to atone for it - this one, and an epic called Intolerance about how bad intolerance is.

Of course, in Broken Blossoms his attempt to atone gets muddied by his views on sex. It's still a definite improvement on Birth of a Nation, though.