Way Down East

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.

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.

This is one of my favourite silents. You can really sympathize with Lillian's character -- in fact, some of the themes are still relevant today such as the sexual double standard women face. Squire Bartlett was giving Lillian a hard time because he knew nothing of her family background when she came to him to find employment -- yet, had it been a man, the Squire would respect the man's right to privacy regarding his private life.

Lillian's acting is great. To me the true judgement of a silent film's effectiveness is the ability to stir up emotions in viewers just by watching the actor's face and body movements. Lillian achieves this beautifully. I think if this were a talkie the effect would have been less.

Overall, this is a great film but a bit long in some parts. For example, that Perkins woman (with the ringlets) was quite annoying and the film sometimes focused a little too much on her antics. I give it a 9 out of 10.

You can't keep a good story down. DW Griffith's film of Way Down East was an adaptation of a popular play of the late 19th century, but that play was itself a rather flagrant rip-off of the Robert Hardy novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles. True, the ending was substantially altered, and Way Down East's conclusions were fustily moralist compared with Hardy's bold progressiveness, but this in a way just goes to show how almost identical situations and characters can be adapted to suit a variety of means. Griffith keeps the moral sentiments of the play, but for this "elaboration" (the word used in the picture's publicity material at the time) he craftily sheers it of its staginess to produce a work of pure cinema.

Technically Griffith may by now have been overtaken by his peers, but he has lost none of his ability to show character and intention through meaningful staging and encouragement of naturalistic acting. For example, when Lillian Gish turns up at her rich relatives' home, no title card reveals her sense of being out of her depth, but Griffith often keeps her in long shot, emphasising the isolating vastness of the house, and this has an impact on how we view the scene. We then realise Mrs Tremont's embarrassment at having this poor cousin walk into her life by the distance the woman keeps from Gish and her awkward attempts to avoid eye contact. One of the most nicely done scenes is the one of Gish's wedding to Lowell Sherman. Unconventionally, he keeps the camera behind the pastor, obscuring the couple, and keeping a cold empty space in the foreground. This really gives us the impression that something is not right here, even though we haven't been explicitly told so yet.

What really impresses about Way Down East is its beauty, which suffuses almost every frame – exquisite countryside vistas, painterly shot compositions, not to mention many radiant close-ups of Ms Gish. Griffith always liked to make his pictures pleasing to the eye, but there is method in all this gorgeousness. Griffith uses natural beauty to emphasise the idyll of the Bartlett farm, and it's no coincidence that this is at its most striking in the shots when Gish first arrives there. And Griffith continually flatters Gish with the camera, framing her tenderly and often in soft focus, creating a visual metaphor for her delicacy and purity.

Gish's acting is of top standard, far better than the hysterical hamming she displayed in the previous year's Broken Blossoms. It's also nice to see her in a proper adult role rather than the disturbingly odd little girl figure she was in that earlier picture. Richard Barthelmess is also excellent, and like Gish he is capable of expressing a lot by doing very little. Together Gish and Barthelmess give what are probably the best lead performances of any of Griffith's features. No-one else in this cast makes an exceptional impact, but none of them is outstandingly bad either.

A fair few of those supporting players appear mainly for comic relief, and there are by Griffith's standards an unusually large number of comedic interludes in Way Down East. This unfortunately was one of Griffith's biggest weak spots. Some of these gags look like they might be fairly funny in themselves, but they don't look it because Griffith keeps hammering them home with close-ups, making them seem forced and predictable. He should have taken a leaf from his pal Chaplin's book, and shown a series of jokes in a continuous shot, giving them a more natural flow and getting more laughs as a result.

Watching Way Down East also makes me wish Griffith the writer had more confidence in Griffith the director, as well as in his cast and his audience. This picture has far more intertitles than it really needs. There are several which reveal Lennox to be a bounder, but these are superfluous because there are enough clues in the way he scenes are staged and the way Lowell Sherman plays him. It would be far more satisfying for the audience if they were allowed to figure out for themselves that he is up to no good. Still, this is a comparatively small blight on what is one of DW Griffith's most visually lovely, deeply engaging and marvellously acted pictures.