No special feature has dared to produce a mere intimate story about human beings which continues so long as it has something to say and ceases when it has said it.

| Jul 30, 2019

May be [Griffith's] simplest, most affecting work.

| Sep 21, 2014

The most elemental and uncluttered of D.W. Griffith's major melodramas.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 8, 2011

Definitely a silent drama fighting against the traditional limitations of the form and the strict social mores of the day. One of Lillian Gish's most moving performances.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 8, 2011

Although the picture consumes only 90 minutes, it somehow seems draggy, for the reason that everything other than the scenes with the three principals seems extraneous and tends to clog the progression of the tale.

| Mar 5, 2009

One of the screen's greatest symbioses of performance and photography.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 4, 2008

This mawkish Victorian melodrama rises above its faults with a stylishly beautiful film that also brings real tragedy to the screen.

| Original Score: B | May 28, 2007

It's an important film that should be seen, but it's hardly the flawless masterpiece it's often hailed as.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 2, 2007

Very much on the credit side, though, are stretches of pure Griffith poetry, marvellous use of light and shadow in cameraman Billy Bitzer's evocation of foggy Limehouse, and a truly unforgettable performance from Gish.

Full Review | Jun 24, 2006

There is so much that is unusually excellent and excellently unusual in Broken Blossoms that one is compelled by enthusiasm to write about it.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Mar 25, 2006

The delicate insinuations of competing amorous and cultural allegiances provide the movie with some of its best and most technically assured sequences.

| Original Score: A- | Aug 22, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 15, 2005

Progressive for its day, but strictly of historic value today.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 23, 2005

One of D.W. Griffith's most beautiful films.

| May 14, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 28, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 21, 2004

The love story at the center of Broken Blossoms is deliberately overstuffed but unmistakably colored with infinite shades of biting irony and social critique.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 10, 2003

Despite Griffith's trademark sentimentalism this is one of his most successful silent dramas, and the film's handling of the then tricky subject of interracial love is unexpectedly sensitive.

| May 24, 2003

Despite its old-fashioned melodrama roots, a great movie with Gish at her most beautiful and vulnerable. Griffith was the master.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 19, 2002

Tremendously downbeat, but beautifully stylized.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 5, 2002