When Chinese immigrant Cheng Huan moves to London to spread Buddhism, he is unprepared for the deplorable intolerance of its inner city. But Huan succumbs to his environment; his missionary dream turns into indifference, until he finds battered Lucy Burrows at his doorstep.

After such extravagant (albeit problematic) epics as Birth of a Nation and Intolerance, pioneering filmmaker D.W. Griffith stripped things back with this most lyrical of silent films. It boasts an astonishingly vulnerable performance by the ground-breaking actress of the silent screen, Lillian Gish.