Broken Blossoms

D.W. Griffith strips his filmmaking down to its most intimate scale for this devastating chamber piece set in the fog-choked alleyways of Limehouse, London. Lillian Gish gives one of the great silent performances as Lucy, a brutalized young woman whose only tenderness comes from a gentle Chinese immigrant (Richard Barthelmess) dreaming of spreading Buddhist peace to the West. Their fragile bond is heartbreaking precisely because you know it cannot survive the world around it. The film's treatment of its Chinese protagonist is remarkably sympathetic for its era, even as it reflects the limitations of its time. What endures is Gish — her terror in the closet scene is still almost unbearable to watch.