D.W. Griffith followed up the majestic Broken Blossoms with this epic melodrama.
The subtitle, "A Simple Story Of Plain People", tells only half the story. Way Down East is a parable with simple values told on a bravura scale. At the time of release the story Griffith offered seemed out of kilter with a society on the cusp of a decade of decadence. However, the Victorian messages of tolerance, charity, understanding and forgiveness seemed more pertinent than ever. And as much as the film is an affirmation of love, honest living and general goodness, it is also takes a swipe at the puritanical aspects of Christianity. It became one of the highest grossing films of the 1920's.
The story is one of hardship and of suffering. Anna Moore (Lillian Gish) is a naive country girl sent to stay as a "poor relation" with her cousins in the city where she falls under the influence of a cad Lennox Sanderson (deliciously played Lowell Shermann) who sets up a false wedding and tricks the infatuated Anna into sleeping with him. Inevitably, Anna quickly falls pregnant and Sanderson absconds leaving her to face her fate alone. And it is a terrible fate. She returns home but her mother soon dies and then, in one of the films most poignant scenes, the illegitimate newborn child that will be her curse dies in her arms in a boarding house. It is soon realised that Anna has no husband and she becomes a pariah; unable to find work and told to leave her board.
She is forced to wander to find work and, finally, she stumbles across a farm owned by the puritanical Squire Bartlett. At first he turns Anna away, but his wife speaks to him of Christian scripture and they take her in. She lives a blameless, hardworking life with the Bartletts and slowly finds herself falling in love with the Bartletts son David (Richard Barthelmess) but the cross she bears prevents her from giving in to her feelings. This is only amplified when she discovers that Sanderson owns an estate adjacent to the Bartletts and he puts pressure on her to leave. However, her secret is only eventually when she is recognised by her old landlady. She is cast out into the blizzard by the Squire but not before she exposes Sanderson (who is present) as the architect of her doom. Wandering into the freezing night she finally passes out on a drifting glacier leading to one of the most exciting and jaw-dropping climaxes of Silent cinema.
Way Down East was a labour of love for Griffith. The photography is some of the finest he was to ever produce whilst he waited for the seasons to change and for nature to flourish in order to capture and represent the changing moods and emotions of his characters. Similarly, the final moments on the ice floes of the Mamaroneck river is one of the great location sequences. Gish herself (who died in 1993 aged 99) never regained full feeling in her hand from having it draped in the icy water for so long.
This film is open to accusations of being old fashioned, but I feel anybody who levels such claims would be missing the point. This is melodrama of grand proportions and it carries within it messages and morals that are universal and timeless. And when these messages are carried by an actress as mesmerising and as dignified as Lillian Gish then, as Way Down East undoubtedly proves, no amount of generational drift can render them obsolete.
The subtitle, "A Simple Story Of Plain People", tells only half the story. Way Down East is a parable with simple values told on a bravura scale. At the time of release the story Griffith offered seemed out of kilter with a society on the cusp of a decade of decadence. However, the Victorian messages of tolerance, charity, understanding and forgiveness seemed more pertinent than ever. And as much as the film is an affirmation of love, honest living and general goodness, it is also takes a swipe at the puritanical aspects of Christianity. It became one of the highest grossing films of the 1920's.
The story is one of hardship and of suffering. Anna Moore (Lillian Gish) is a naive country girl sent to stay as a "poor relation" with her cousins in the city where she falls under the influence of a cad Lennox Sanderson (deliciously played Lowell Shermann) who sets up a false wedding and tricks the infatuated Anna into sleeping with him. Inevitably, Anna quickly falls pregnant and Sanderson absconds leaving her to face her fate alone. And it is a terrible fate. She returns home but her mother soon dies and then, in one of the films most poignant scenes, the illegitimate newborn child that will be her curse dies in her arms in a boarding house. It is soon realised that Anna has no husband and she becomes a pariah; unable to find work and told to leave her board.
She is forced to wander to find work and, finally, she stumbles across a farm owned by the puritanical Squire Bartlett. At first he turns Anna away, but his wife speaks to him of Christian scripture and they take her in. She lives a blameless, hardworking life with the Bartletts and slowly finds herself falling in love with the Bartletts son David (Richard Barthelmess) but the cross she bears prevents her from giving in to her feelings. This is only amplified when she discovers that Sanderson owns an estate adjacent to the Bartletts and he puts pressure on her to leave. However, her secret is only eventually when she is recognised by her old landlady. She is cast out into the blizzard by the Squire but not before she exposes Sanderson (who is present) as the architect of her doom. Wandering into the freezing night she finally passes out on a drifting glacier leading to one of the most exciting and jaw-dropping climaxes of Silent cinema.
Way Down East was a labour of love for Griffith. The photography is some of the finest he was to ever produce whilst he waited for the seasons to change and for nature to flourish in order to capture and represent the changing moods and emotions of his characters. Similarly, the final moments on the ice floes of the Mamaroneck river is one of the great location sequences. Gish herself (who died in 1993 aged 99) never regained full feeling in her hand from having it draped in the icy water for so long.
This film is open to accusations of being old fashioned, but I feel anybody who levels such claims would be missing the point. This is melodrama of grand proportions and it carries within it messages and morals that are universal and timeless. And when these messages are carried by an actress as mesmerising and as dignified as Lillian Gish then, as Way Down East undoubtedly proves, no amount of generational drift can render them obsolete.