10. If "The Birth of a Nation" is not to your taste, how about another D. W. Griffith movie released four years later? In "Broken Blossoms", how does the heroine, Lucy Barrows, meet her untimely end?
From Quiz What a Way to Go: Death In the Movies
Answer:
Beaten to death by her father
"Broken Blossoms" is one of my favorite D. W. Griffith films. Released in 1919, it tells the story of Lucy Barrows, played by Lillian Gish, a young girl living in London who forms a friendship with a Chinese immigrant named Cheng Huan (played by Richard Barthelmess). Lucy is repeatedly abused by her father, a drunken boxer named Battling Barrows. Her father is played by Donald Crisp, who is best remembered for playing the kind father, Gwilym Morgan, in 1941's "How Green Was My Valley". In this film, however, he is one of the worst villains in the history of the cinema.
Lucy and the Chinese man form a close, but entirely platonic, friendship. In his apartment, she is able to escape from the brutality of her existence. When her father finds out that she has been spending time with Cheng Huan, he drags her back to his house and begins beating her. She tries to hide in a closet, but her father breaks down the door with a hatchet, and literally beats her to death. Cheng Huan arrives too late to rescue Lucy, and shoots her father with a pistol. He carries her lifeless body home, places her before his shrine to the Buddha, and then kills himself.
The closet scene is one of the most moving in the history of motion pictures. Many critics consider "Broken Blossoms" to be one of the finest silent films ever made. Lillian Gish's performance is extraordinary.