Way Down East

Way Down East
In what may have been his most brilliant surprise, D.W. Griffith transformed an archaic melodrama about a wronged woman into a transcendent love story of redemption. Lillian Gish plays an innocent New Englander seduced by an urbane charmer (Lowell Sherman), who arranges a mock marriage and then abandons her when she's pregnant. When the baby dies from illness, Gish leaves the city and changes her identity. She finds herself reborn in the pastoral splendor of a farming community, catching the adoring eye of a young idealist (Richard Barthelmess), only to have the past come back to haunt her. Griffith made two kinds of films: spectacles and love stories. It's the tremulous love stories such as Way Down East that have endured the best. This 1920 film is a triumph of humanity over cruelty, a work that brilliantly conveys emotion through environment. The famous climax on the floating river of ice is still amazing--especially since it uses no special effects. --Bill Desowitz
Customer Review: Interesting...
2.5 stars. I have no idea how I ended up watching this movie. Overall, the soundtrack was distracting that I literally ended up muting the movie and just reading the placards. It may it a little better. The storyline is an old standard but it's the movie dramatic ice floe scene that is what made this so memorable and squeezed out a 1/2 star from me. This is and feels longs--especially for a silent film. If you're just curious about this as a classic then check it out, if not let it float on by.
Customer Review: An emotional tour de force
As a number of other reviewers have already provided the plot synopsis, I'll only focus on my reaction to the film. I really think this film is far and away my favorite Griffith feature; although this one is extremely long, as are most of his other features, I was never bored, and didn't feel as though I were being hit over the head with some preachy moral lecture. The opening intertitles are rather heavy-handed, but thankfully the entire rest of the film just tells the story, with not much emotional manipulation. It also gets right down to the action, instead of taking awhile to set up characters and storylines. The viewer is immediately drawn into the story and the characters. Though it's set in early 20th century New England, the essential story and theme seem timeless instead of dated. While the sexual double standard isn't as rigid as it used to be, it does still exist, and one could even imagine such a story with different particulars, a story of an innocent young lady tricked by someone she loved and trusted, forced to hide her past, and then making a new life for herself and seeking redemption, proving to the people around her that she's a different person and that she was an innocent victim, not someone to be harshly judged. I must say that, in spite of my own old-fashioned personal beliefs on the subject, watching this film made me so, so, SO glad that I live in a time and place where it's no longer considered sinful, shameful, shocking, and scandalous for an unmarried woman to have a baby. It makes me so grateful for how far we've come since the early 20th century, no longer judging the woman as the "guilty" party, while ignoring the man's role in her having had a baby, ruining the reputations of lovely girls and women who happened to have this happen to them (for whatever reason, and as in the case of Anna Moore, because she thought she was married), feeling that a child born to an unmarried mother "had no name." In spite of the heavy topic, though, the story just does its job and develops, without heavy-handed editorialising intertitles or overwrought dramatics. The message is conveyed through the power of the story. And so many decades later, the penultimate scene, David's pursuit of Anna across the ice floes, is still as powerful as ever. My heart was in my throat the entire time, not knowing what the outcome would be. All of the acting is wonderful, in particular Lillian Gish as the lead character. She was such a consummate professional, a true acting goddess, and willing to put so much into her roles, as in this film, where she suffered some permanent nerve damage to her hand from it having been submerged in that icy water for so long. I felt cold just from watching that harrowing penultimate scene. Richard Barthelmess as David Bartlett is also magnificent. I wish more of his films were commercially available; he was so talented and handsome! In my opinion, the only things the film could have done without were the heavy-handed opening intertitles and a couple of superfluous scenes here and there, esp. the attempts at comedy. This is such a wonderful film that it wouldn't have suffered at all from having some of the fat trimmed.