Mädchenlos

WAY DOWN EAST was an old-fashioned melodrama even in 1920 when D.W. Griffith decided to film it. It's the kind of story that leaves itself open for spoofing, but Griffith approaches the story of a "mock marriage" and its aftermath with earnestness and a great eye for detail.

Aiding Griffith in bringing this story to life are three great stars: Lillian Gish as Anna, Richard Barthelmess as David, and Lowell Sherman as caddish Lennox. The supporting cast includes New England "types" that almost parody Dickens. Kate Bruce is the staunch mother, Creighton Hale the ditzy professor, Vivia Ogden the town gossip, Burr McIntosh the intolerant squire, Emily Fitzroy runs the hotel, etc.

The story of love, betrayal, tolerance, and redemption is slow moving and has (as usual in a Griffith film) subplots, but like the very river, all the actions and events slowly come together for the finale that left 1920 audiences in a frenzy. Indeed the ending is among the most famous in all silent films.

Gish is quite beautiful here. In her opening scene she is in her parlor with her mother making a broom, holding up the straw so that we see only her white cap and large expressive eyes. She's stunning. As Anna she goes through the gamut of shy maiden, young lover, wronged woman, timid servant, and town jezebel. Barthelmess is solid as the young and innocent David who falls in love with the servant girl.

Their final scenes in the blizzard (filmed on Long Island in a real storm) on the icy river (filmed in White River Junction, VT) are totally amazing. And they did not use stunt doubles. As Gish lies exhausted on the piece of ice she may or may not know that it's heading for the falls. There are scenes were her hand and hair trail in the icy river. Just amazing. Barthelmess uses the breaking ice as a trail so that he can reach Gish before it's too late. There are several shots where he falls off the ice or the ice breaks under him and he plunges into that wintry river. The entire sequence is as thrilling today as it was in 1920.

Gish once wrote that her long hair froze solid from being in the river water and snapped off with the ice.

WAY DOWN EAST is a great film.

Way Down East (1920)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Anna (Lillian Gish), a naive country girl travels to Boston to ask her rich relatives for some money but once there she meets a rich man (Lowell Sherman) who likes to play the ladies. Soon the rich man cons Anna into a fake marriage but when he learns that she's pregnant he informs her that the marriage is fake and he leaves her. After the baby dies, she's kicked out everywhere because people see her as an unwed mother. She lands a new job with a family but keeps her secret from everyone including a young man (Richard Barthelmess) who falls for her but soon gossip reaches the town and Anna's secret comes out.

Being a huge fan of the director I'm really not sure what took me so long in watching this film. I've read countless books on the director, silent era and Gish and everyone of them have mentioned the ending to this film, which has Anna stuck on a sheet of ice while is quickly goes down river and nearing a waterfall but more on this later. The story itself deals with hypocrites in religion and one of Griffith's favorite subjects of the rich taking advantage of the poor. The story itself really isn't all that original but there's certainly magic all over the film. Lillian Gish, the greatest of all silent female actresses, turns in another marvelous performance as the poor girl who doesn't know when her heart is being played with. There's a short but heartbreaking sequence where Anna is taking care of her dying child and the tenderness and heartache in the eyes of Gish says more than any words could. The power that this scene contains is just one reason why I think silent films are more powerful than sound ones. Richard Barthelmess is also terrific as the young man who sees Anna as a virgin wife and the changes his character goes through are perfectly captures by the actor. Lowell Sherman is also terrific in his role which has to be one of the greatest villains in film history. Griffith certainly builds up the hatred towards his character and it's quite powerful. The cinematography by G.W. Bitzer is among the best of his career.

You can't say Griffith today without getting into a bullshit debate about race but this is a damn shame because there's no doubt in my mind that he had the greatest mind in the history of cinema. We could talk about the battle scenes in The Birth of a Nation or we can talk about nearly any scene in Intolerance but there's no question that Griffith knew how to create suspense and really push a scene for everything it's worth. The famous scene here is the climax where Anna is stuck on the ice and it's just downright remarkable at what they were able to pull off. Various people nearly died in Griffith's 1915 and 1916 epics and that holds true here where both Gish and Barthelmess nearly died pulling off this scene. I've read countless books that talked about how this stuff was filmed but it still seems impossible that they were able to pull this off. The epic scenery and the way it's shot shows that there isn't any trickery going on, which is just downright remarkable. It really blows my mind at how Griffith could pull all of this stuff off and watching it on screen is just something truly remarkable. Apparently Gish suffered permanent injuries to her hand while filming in the cold water, which is just another reason why silent stars were so remarkable since they had to do their own stunts and without the benefit of CGI. Considering that the term "special effects" weren't into play when this was filmed, it's really breathtaking to see something like this take place. It's amazing but 88-years later I can't think of a scene that matches this.

DW Griffith's ideal was that dreams can come true or should be shown to, and that cinema should work to that effect. He carried all the other Victorian values with him, the edifying fable, usually a big sappy story, grandiose love, austere morals, the struggle against forces of darkness. These are old and mouldy relics now, and must have even seemed so at the time to young more radical cineastes abroad.

But he was our first master of technique and many learned from him, Abel Gance in France, Sjostrom in Sweden, of course Chaplin, Kuleshov and his film workshop. Here he perfects the business with layers he was still struggling with in Intolerance.

Intolerance always cut back and forth to very concrete moments in time, every intertitle announcing so in advance, as a result we got forced, simple metaphysics. Simple physics in fact, exhaustively so. You did not have to do any work, merely be swept as part of one or the other mob. It was clean linear history, movement in one direction.

I want to direct your attention to two instances here. One is where we have just followed another segment of the misadventures of the naive country girl betrayed by the rich playboy, the film suddenly cuts away to the handsome country boy - her true love interest we presume - being jostled awake in bed as though from a bad dream and himself the dreamer of our story. This has saturated so ubiquitously in film culture, it is now considered in bad taste to signify a dream scene in this way.

The other is the awesomely mounted ice-breaker finale, impressive for just the selection of cascading imagery but now parting to reveal soul, the whole fabric of the world being torn beneath the feet of our heroine to reveal a liquid universe below, stories written in waters and swept away and forgotten. In all the years of film since then we have only managed to invent a third layer on top of Griffith's two, adding in the equation the veracity of the author supplying the fabric and imagery, and have mostly spent that time transferring the whole more directly to the eye and perfecting links and arrangements.

More erudite filmmakers would envision complex worlds with more clarity, but as far as nuts and bolts film mechanics are concerned a lot of it is patented here.

A young woman, after being lured into a false marriage, finds the chance for happiness on a friendly farm WAY DOWN EAST.

David Wark Griffith, the Father of American Cinema, had his last great financial blockbuster with this highly sentimentalized silent melodrama. Always anxious to promote decency & morality with his epic films, Griffith here exposes & castigates male brutality against the weaker female, making this a stark portrayal of Good versus Evil as he follows the fortunes and misfortunes of his long-suffering heroine.

Bird-like & fragile, Lillian Gish takes the brunt of the plot upon her young shoulders. To say that she performs magnificently is only to state the expected. The wealth of emotions stealing across her lovely face give expression to her every thought, as her character struggles to maintain her equilibrium against the onslaughts hurled against her.

Richard Barthelmess portrays the quietly heroic farm lad who becomes paladin for Miss Gish during her tribulations while abiding in his home. His stalwart decency is in strong contrast to the villainy of Lowell Sherman, the rich roué whose misdeeds nearly destroy Lillian.

Griffith's broad canvas allows for detailed portraits by a fine supporting cast: a pharisaical squire (Burr McIntosh), his saintly wife (Kate Bruce), a butterfly-chasing professor (Creighton Hale), a dour landlady (Emily Fitzroy), a lazy, good-natured constable (George Neville), a jolly, oafish farmhand (Edgar Nelson), and a gossiping spinster (Vivia Ogden).

The film climaxes with one of the most famous sequences in all of Silent Cinema: Barthelmess' rescue of Miss Gish as she lies unconscious on an ice floe, speeding towards a tremendous waterfall. Filmed on Long Island in the dead of Winter, the performers were in real peril. These scenes still pack a punch and are worthy testimony to Griffith's genius.

Special mention should be made of the cinematography of G. W. Bitzer, Griffith's invaluable cameraman. His beautiful photography softly illumines both the tender scenes and the bucolic vistas, giving them the quality of aged snapshots in a cherished family album.

Lillian Gish and fellow co-stars really bring home this great drama. It's interesting and exciting and wonderful to watch. Surely a legend of the 20th Century, Mr Griffith outdid himself with this successful film and Gish can only be praised for a great performance. Her pain and despair can be felt in the scene's where she realises she's been 'betrayed' and she nurses her child while he slips from this world. It's acting at it's finest for no words were necessary, it's all in 'the look'. Certainly 10 out of 10, but if I were to make one comment about this film in the negative, it would be it's length. Perhaps 15 to 20 minutes too long. Otherwise it's majestic.