9. Way Down East (1920)
US 100m Silent BW
Director: D.W. Griffith
Screenplay: Anthony Paul Kelly, D.W. Griffith
Music: Louis Silvers
Cast: Lilian Gish, Richard Barthelmess, Lowell Sherman, Burr McIntosh
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Soon after The Birth of a Nation (1915), one of the most profitable films ever made, D.W. Griffith saw his career go into decline, mostly as a result of his inability to adapt to the changing desires of the filmgoing public. Griffith had specialized in bringing Victorian melodrama, with its talesof threatened female innocence, to the screen. By 1920, however, audiences had began to show less interest in virtue rescued or preserved. It was therefore a surprise that Griffith decided to adapt for the screen the 1890s stage melodrama Way Down East, not to mention that he was able to breathe new life into the story and make it into a very successful film.
Anna Moore (Lilian Gish) leaves her small New England village to live with wealthier relatives in Boston. There she comes under the spell of an attractive young man named Sanderson (Lowell Sherman), who tricks her into sleeping with him by staging a phony marriage. He then sends her back to New England, with a command to keep silent about their nuptials. Upon discovering she is pregnant, Anna contacts him, only to learn the bitter truth. Nothing but disaster follows. Her mother dies. So does her child. She is driven away from the rooming house where she has taken shelter because the landlady suspects she isn’t married. Luckily, she finds a new position at a nearby farm owned by Squire Barlett (Burr McIntosh), but Sanderson lives not far away. At the farm, Anna meets the squire’s son David (Richard Barthelmess), and the two soon fall in love.
But Anna’s past catches up with her. Dismissed from the squire’s employ, she wanders off into a terrible snowstorm and finds herself on a frozen river. Floating away on an ice floe toward huge falls, Anna is rescued at the last minute by David. Sanderson’s villainy is exposed, and Anna reconciles with the repentant squire. The film ends with their wedding. The dramatic parts of Way Down East are kept lively by Griffith’s pacing of the narrative and the affecting performances of an able cast. The film’s action conclusion, however, shows the director at his finest, both in the shooting of the sequence (parts were filmed on a frozen Vermont river) and in the editing, which is fast paced and thrilling.
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Information
Internet Movie Database (IMdb)
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RapidShare Links
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http://rapidshare.com/files/65002155/DWGWDE20.part12.rar
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This article was written by R. Barton Palmer and is included in the book “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die” (Ed. S. J. Schneider)
Copyright © 2006 Quintet Publishing Ltd
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