In his odd but fascinating book "Seductive Cinema," James Card takes D. W. Griffith (not a favorite of his, to say the least) to task for combining two modes of presentation in the same film, often the same frame: "theatrical" mimicry of other racial groups by white actors on the one hand, the presence of actual members of those groups on the other. Card writes (p. 40) about Broken Blossoms: "...his (Griffith's) theatrical orientation lured him into a major aesthetic error that militates against one's acceptance of the film today as a great work. Richard Barthelmess, cast as a Chinese in London's Limehouse district, is made up as a stereotyped stage Chinaman, eyes narrowed to tiny slits, hands tucked into his sleeves and made to walk hunched over with teetering steps. All perfectly acceptacle as a nineteenth-century theatrical cliche. But Griffith made the mistake of surrounding Barthelmess with real Chinese, none of whom looked anything like the chief protagonist. In The Birth of a Nation, Griffith was betrayed by this stagecraft into the same aesthetic error. His principal players cast as blacks are white actors and actresses, their faces smeared not too carefully with blackface madeup . . .Well and good had he been producing a minstrel show, but again, extras in the film are real blacks bearing no resemblance to Tom Wilson, George Siegmann or Walter Long." The movies quickly learned to tone down the makeup conventions that had traditionally indicated that an actor was "playing" black or Asian, but the reluctance to use actual, non-Caucasianized performers of other races, especially in romantic roles, persisted until quite recently. (I hope it's okay to post quotes to the Net without the author's permission; it seems to me like a citation in a book, but correct me if I'm wrong). Barbara Bernstein email: [log in to unmask] Kinexis, San Francisco, CA ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]