| Details | Live musical accompaniment by Appalasia Copresented with the National Gallery of Art Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JzhhUCo1xY D. W. Griffith adapted a story from Thomas Burke’s popular 1916 collection Limehouse Nights. Set in London’s East End, Broken Blossom’s moody fog-bound tale is a tender love story, a tragic melodrama, and a prescient study in immigrant relations. Cheng Huan (Richard Barthelmess) arrives in England to bring “the message of Buddha to the Anglo-Saxon lands” but ekes out a life as a shopkeeper. The delicate Lucy (Lillian Gish) and her pugilist dad Battling Burrows (Donald Crisp) are the locals who inhabit the uncouth life of the quarter in meager digs. Original live score for erhu, dulcimer, and banjo performed by Mimi Jong, Jeff Berman, and Sue Powers of the ensemble Appalasia. (Dir.: D. W. Griffith, United States, 1919, 90 min., DCP, b&w, silent with English intertitles) Images courtesy of Photofest. |
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