Broken Blossoms
Director: D.W. Griffith
Year Released: 1919
Rating: 2.0
After spilling food on her father's (Donald Crisp) hand, Lillian Gish gets beaten (he has daughter-issues that are never explored; Griffith makes him huff and puff like a monster and grimace for the camera); once he leaves, she manages to stagger out of their one-room flat and find help from the "Yellow Man" (Griffith's description), a kind Chinese shop owner. Predictably enough, her father, the one-dimensional insane boxer he is, goes batshit when he finds out from a spy about Gish's alleged transgressions and then whips her further - the "Yellow Man" (also referred to as "Chink"), takes revenge for her but at the cost of his own life (in a page from Romeo & Juliet, he stabs himself). If you separate the visual contributions Griffith's made to film from his films' plots, you'll realize he was a god-awful storyteller with an underdeveloped view of morality.
