While the level of cinematic innovoatin apparent in The Birth Of A Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916) may not be as evident here, D.W. Griffith’s Broken Blossoms is a much more coherent and attractive ode to tolerance, even if it’s without the epic trappings of his earlier films. The film, based on a short story called “The Chink and the Child by Thomas Burke, must necessarily be viewed in the context of the time it was made – Caucasian actors play all of the lead Chinese parts (and not very convincingly) and racial slurs are tossed around quite casually –
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