Archival Print! Bruce Loeb on Piano Broken Blossoms is a modern-day fairy tale set in London'sLimehouse district, the story of a street waif (Lillian Gish) who findstemporary shelter from her sadistic father in the chaste love of anidealistic young Chinese immigrant (Richard Barthelmess). More thanbeing D. W. Griffith's brokenhearted farewell to the flower offemininity (as personified by Gish), this is a pathetic lament for thedeath of any kind of gentleness in a changing, sordid world. Asportrayed by the affecting actor Richard Barthelmess, the young Asian isnearly as feminine as Gish herself, and as brutalized by the Westernenvironment that drives him to violence. Many critics consider BrokenBlossoms to be the most perfect realization of Griffith's art. It is adrama made up of intimate observations, rigorously linked throughrhythmic editing into an elegantly structured narrative.