Way Down East

Plot synopsis:
The rich, typified by the handsome man-about-town Lennox (Lowell Sherman), are exceptionally selfish and think only of their own pleasure.
Anna (Lillian Gish) is a poor country girl whom Lennox tricks into a fake wedding. When she becomes pregnant, he leaves her. She has the baby, named Trust Lennox, on her own.
When the baby dies she wanders until she gets a job with Squire Bartlett (Burr McIntosh). David (Richard Barthelmess), Squire Bartlett's son, falls for her, but she rejects him due to her past. Then Lennox shows up lusting for another local girl, Kate. Seeing Anna, he tries to get her to leave, but she refuses to go, although she promises to say nothing about his past.
Finally, Squire Bartlett learns of Anna's past from Martha, the town gossip. In his anger, he tosses Anna out into a snow storm. Before she goes, she fingers the respected Lennox as her despoiler and the father of her dead baby. Anna becomes lost in the raging storm while David leads a search party. In the famous climax, the unconscious Anna floats on an ice floe down a river towards a waterfall, until rescued at the last moment by David, who marries her in the final scene.
Subplots relate the romances and eventual marriages of some of the picaresque characters inhabiting the village.

Tags: romantic, melodrama

Review:
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.
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.
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.
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..
The atmospheric splendor of the cinematography and the melancholy mood set by the original musical score (on the Kino Video release) lull the viewer into the sense of reverie essential to appreciating this charming representation of countrified America facing the encroachment of big city evils.The story is well-told by director D.W. Griffith, and the moral message of Woman's spiritual virtuosity is exploited without the sermonizing of some of his other pictures.
In bringing the sweetness of his famous one-reelers to a major feature film, Griffith captured an almost magical tone and ambiance that distinguishes Way Down East as a masterful piece of intimate storytelling, rivaling Broken Blossoms (1919) in its intensity and sheer beauty.However, it must be said that Griffith's sideline excesses in plot development are many and varied, hindering the progression of the central tale of Anna Moore's struggle to escape her past and search out a new life.
To do justice to her part, as well as to form an exciting contrast to the pastoral images to follow, Griffith went all out in the costume department, hiring top fashion designer Lucile (Lady Duff Gordon) to design glitzy gowns for the garden party and ball scenes.Despite some errors in continuity, Way Down East's celebrated climax of Anna's rescue from an ice-flow as it drifts toward a roaring waterfall, is perfectly paced and as thrilling as it must have been to audiences in 1920.
"Way Down East" will probably be a hard pill for many filmgoers to swallow, as it's a silent and very long, but I would recommend you give it a try, as it's also pretty entertaining.Lillian Gish gets put through her melodramatic paces by the granddaddy of modern cinema, D.W. Griffith.
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.
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.
Never one to shy away from expressing his personal beliefs in his films, Griffith uses this simple story to sermonize about the moral character of men (basically they're all either doe-eyed innocents or total bastards) while also finding time to criticize the idle rich and prop up women as madonna figures.
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.
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.
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 movie as a whole is imperfect - it's a bit too long, and is occasionally preachy - but it fits together well, and is a deserving classic of the silent film era.The story is openly moralistic, and would not have worked without good characters and acting.
Lillian Gish is deservedly remembered for her role, but Lowell Sherman is also important as the oily Sanderson - his understated performance makes his villainy more effective, and balances out the parts of the movie that are more heavy-handed (the title cards, in particular, leave no doubt as to how the director feels).
This film has a great reputation as one of the classics of the silent cinema - starring Lillian Gish as Anna, a simple soul from a poor family, but with rich relations; Richard Barthelmess as David, the son of a country Squire; and Lowell Sherman as Sanderson, an adventurer.Does it deserve its reputation?
Well, Lillian Gish was certainly an excellent actress, very natural and expressive, and while the film drags a bit in places (and has some comedy scenes which really don't belong), it does have one or two places where the emotion of what's happening on screen reaches across the distance of nearly ninety years and makes the film work very well.Beautifully shot, especially the final scenes out on the river as the ice thaws, this is perhaps DW Griffith's best film - without the dubious racist leanings of Birth of a Nation or the OTT leanings of Intolerance.
Sherman tricks Gish into a mock marriage, and leaves her pregnant Deceptively subtitled "A Simple Story of Plain People"; possibly, director D.W. Griffith was seeking to enhance his film's dramatic twists and turns; since, while Gish's "Anna" could be considered of "plain" stock, what happens her could not be called "simple".
This film reunites Lillian Gish and Richard Barthelmess, after the successful "Broken Blossoms" (1919); their "Way Down East" performances are also stunning, though Barthelmess has less to do this time around.
The spectacular ending is still riveting after all these years; but, it works best after you've seen the preceding story of degradation and love.The flaw in "Way Down East" may be Griffith's overindulgence in ludicrous "slapstick"-type humor; this is most explicit in Edgar Nelson's "Hi Holler" character, which really lays an egg.
********** Way Down East (9/3/20) D.W. Griffith ~ Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess, Lowell Sherman, Creighton Hale.
One much watch silent films with a sympathetic view, understanding that much of the seemingly-sloppy editing, jarring grain changes, and nitrate deterioration are not the fault of the filmmakers - who had, by 1920, locked down the basics of film grammar still used today - but subject to the laws of nature, and must be imagined in their original state as one must do while walking through the ruins of the Roman Forum.One reel into this so-called "Victorian melodrama," and every jerky cut and washed out sky are hidden behind the remarkable acting talents of Gish as tragedy-stricken Anna Moore.
Squire's son David (Richard Barthelmess) falls for Anna, only for Lennox to show up lusting after another girl.It's hard for me to bring myself to criticise and evaluate a work of D.W. Griffith.
It's quite hard to swallow morality lessons from the man that made The Birth of a Nation (1915), a film that glamorised the Ku Klux Klan, and made black people out to be nothing more than loutish animals.Yet the film does display Griffith's film-making ability, especially in the famous climax that shows David rescuing an unconscious Anna from an ice flood.
A naive country girl (Lillian Gish) is tricked into a sham marriage by a wealthy womanizer, then must rebuild her life despite the taint of having borne a child out of wedlock.Although it was Griffith's most expensive film to date, it was also one of his most commercially successful.
(I realize now that this is just a product of the soundtrack; most silent films released today come with soundtracks that were recorded decades later that include appropriate music and sound effects.) KEVIN: On September 3, 1920, hotshot motion picture director D.W. Griffith released yet another film masterpiece, Way Down East, yet again with the wonderful Lillian Gish.
Lillian Gish offers one of the greatest performances in the history of film, not only for the famous scene where she is rescued while unconscious on the ice floes, but in countless other moments as well (most memorably when she desperately tries to blow life into her dying infant).
In the 1960's Time called "Way Down East" the greatest film ever made and had no less than Charles Laughton & Lillian Gish to back it up.
Terrible beginning in a story of a naive girl being hoodwinked into a sham marriage by the worst kind of pariah.Many lessons here about Money,Betrayal,Love,and Life being unfair.Musical score is too similar to a lot of Silents and Lillian Gish looks too much the same in her movies.The comical faces are too funny in this movie and I enjoyed the Party Scene where they all danced to old time tunes.For an early silent it is worth watching...
WAY DOWN EAST (United Artists, 1920), subtitled "a simple story about plain people," reunites director D.W. Griffith with his BROKEN BLOSSOMS (1919) co-stars, Lillian Gish and Richard Barthelmess, in an old-fashioned story based on a vintage play that turned out to become something of a commercial success and one of the true classics of the silent screen to be still remembered today.
Aside from the simple-minded story consisting of country people and snobbish relatives, with a tragic heroine, a farm boy and an interloper of society whose three specialties happen to be "ladies," "ladies" and "ladies," heading the cast, it's most crucial scene, set during a violent snow storm, is the key factor of the entire photo-play, given the most realistic effect filmed on location in Vermont during the dead of winter, with Gish suffering more in real life in the freezing cold than the heroine she was portraying.
Set in a remote village in New England, the story begins with Anna Moore (Lillian Gish), a poor girl living with her widowed mother (Mrs. David Landau) who has fallen into hard times.
Anna finds love and happiness with their son, David (Richard Barthelmess), but things start to fall apart upon the arrival of Lennox, along with Martha Perkins (Viva Ogden), the town gossip, learning the truth about Anna's past, thus spreading the news to the Squire, who then orders the grief-stricken Anna out of his house, into the cold.The popularity of WAY DOWN EAST prompted reissues in later years in shorter prints, with the trimming of some comedy relief and other scenes from its original 140 to 107 minutes.
Another scene worth noting is the crucial one where Anna (Gish) performs her own baptism on her dead baby, "Trust Lennox." In 1984, WAY DOWN EAST made news in movie magazines when, after five years of hard work, was restored to its original length and revived at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, much to the delight of silent film enthusiasts.
However, comparing the two, the restored version gives credit to the leading players and their roles in the opening while the restored version, available on both VHS and DVD format through Kino Video, does not, although its re-recording to the original soundtrack sounds almost similar to the 1930s reissue, slightly slower in tempo, but good overall.Other members of the cast include: Josephine Bernard (Mrs. Tremond); Porter Strong (Seth Holcomb); George Neville (Reuben Whipple); Edgar Nelson (Hi Holler); and Creighton Hale (Professor Sterling).Unlike BROKEN BLOSSOMS, where the characters played by Barthelmess and Gish are of equal status, WAY DOWN EAST belongs to Gish while Barthelmess has little to do, except for the key scene near the end.
As famous as WAY DOWN EAST has become, the 1935 Fox Film remake starring Rochelle Hudson and Henry Fonda is something to consider in comparing to the original, but as remakes go, there's no comparison to the original, especially with the sincere performance by Lillian Gish giving one of her best screen performances of his career.
"Way Down East" doesn't touch on historical themes but he does candidly and openly explore moral issues that in his time were either evaded or resolved with harsh condemnation of those who strayed from the path of religious dogma-inspired righteousness.The wonderful Lillian Gish is Anna Moore, who loses her mother and seeks, being bereft of money, shelter from rich relatives.
D.W Griffith's outstanding 'Way Down East' is one of the best films produced by America in the silent era.
It is a monument to epic film-making, and the talents of it's director, Griffith, and it's star, the great Lillian Gish.In a plot very similar to that of Thomas Hardy's famous novel 'Tess Of The D'Urbervilles', Gish portrays Anna Moore, a poor farm girl who must leave her relatives in search of assistance from her rich city cousins.
Gish still had a successful film and television career in character parts for many, many years after the induction of sound, but her silent work will always be her lasting contribution.Richard Barthelmess, who Gish regarded as the best-looking man ever to grace the screen, gives an equally fine performance as David.
The most acclaimed sequence, however, is, of course, the film's climax, including the great ice-break scene, which has Richard Barthelmess saving Gish from death (thankfully not rape this time).
This is the climax, but it comes only after a long and occasionally dragging journey.The lovely Ms. Gish plays Anna Moore, a naïve small town girl, tricked into a fake marriage by notorious womanizing playboy Lennox Sanderson (Lowell Sherman).
When the young country girl Anna Moore, played by early big movie star Lillian Gish, for the first time goes to the big 'moder'n town, things go from bad to worse for her.
Through a combination of her talent and Grifftith's direction her gaga-babies, such as Anna Moore in "Way Down East" continue to compel audiences decades later, long after many of the great vamp roles (that, ironically, were once seen as a modern alternative to Griffith's good girl parts) have been forgotten.In "Way Down East," Gish, in a story very reminiscent of Thomas Hardy's "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" plays a naïve country girl who suffers, among offer things, the snobbery of rich cousins, a sham marriage, an illegitimate pregnancy and social ostracization.
Gish is also helped by a good supporting cast including Lowell Sherman as the cad and Richard Barthlemass as the decent farm boy who courts Anna ,but particularly memorable is the gossip whose open glee when she learns the truth about Anna is chilling (here as in "Intolerance" Griffith recognizes that the zeal of the righteous often has more to do with the pleasure of crucifying wrongdoers than anything else.) "Way Down East" bears comparison with Gish's better known films, but avoid the cheap Alpha DVD whose score consists of a few mournful bars of music played over and over..
But despite all this, it still is a very good film.WAY DOWN EAST begins with a poor cousin (Lillian Gish) going to the big city to spend time with her rich relatives.
There were moments in D.W. Griffith's "Way Down East" that could inspire me similar sarcasm, but there is something in Lillian Gish' performance that carries so much sincerity there's never a temptation to look down at the film.But as much as I want to put my so-2010s cynicism aside, I've often wondered whether D.W. Griffith considered himself as a prophet or a filmmaker.
Nothing against the whole build-up but one can look at it as a peaceful ice floe, breaking first, then carrying a poor creature to a doomed ending before a spectacular rescue, the climax plays like the film in microcosm."Way Down East" is a heart-pounding movie about pounding hearts..
The story revolves around Anna Moore (Lillian Gish), an innocent country girl who goes to the city when she and her mother need money.
Anna Moore (Intolerance's Lillian Gish) is the innocent poor country girl who meets Lennox, who convinces her he has feelings, and she is tricked into believing a fake wedding, and he just he just uses her, has his way with her, and then he leaves her when he finds out she is pregnant with his baby.