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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.

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.

"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. Griffith was a master at building his movies up to intolerably exciting finales, and this film is no exception. A classic set piece puts Gish trying to escape across a frozen river, jumping from one drifting block of ice to the next. And consider that this was in the day before special effects, and it's even quite possible that Gish did all of the stunts herself.

A slice of early cinema that goes down easily if you give it the chance.

Grade: A-

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.

This enormously successful film lives up to its legendary reputation. But it's also disappointing.

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. There is a sensitivity and naturalness exhibited in the unfolding narrative of Way Down East and a graceful style seen in none of his other epic-scale ventures. 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. Annoying bits of slapstick humor, totally at odds with the romance and tragedy of the main story, are indulged in while overly sentimental touches, like long, wistful close-ups, are equally aggravating.

Though otherwise superbly acted by Lillian Gish (Anna), her role is marred by the fact that some of her more emotional scenes are unnecessarily drawn out by Griffith. This is particularly true in the sequence of the death of Anna's illegitimate newborn.

Richard Barthelmess, as David Bartlett, Anna's sweetheart and savior, is outstandingly effective, as is Lowell Sherman as the decadent cad Lennox Sanderson who deceives Anna. Not all of the supporting cast was as competent or convincing, due largely to out-of-place comedic impersonations.

One huge stand out is Mary Hay who leaps onto the screen with a refreshing vivacity. The wit she imparts to her small role is the only really clever humor in the movie.

Long-forgotten today, but much discussed at the time, was the cameo appearance in the movie's prologue of popular New York society girl Mrs. Morgan Belmont, who played Diana Tremont, one of Anna's snooty Boston cousins. 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. Considering the limited special effects of the day, the scenes are amazingly realistic. Gish lying unconscious on an ice cake as it zooms to destruction, her arm trailing in the current, is one of the most familiar silent film shots, even to people who know next to nothing about the genre, and although it has become almost cliché, its power is undiminished.

As a story, Way Down East is both fabulous and frustrating but its photographic beauty and emotional resonance are almost unparalleled in the Griffith oeuvre.

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. To say that she performs magnificently is only to state the expected. The wealth of emotions stealing across her lovely face give expression to her every thought, as her character struggles to maintain her equilibrium against the onslaughts hurled against her.

Richard Barthelmess portrays the quietly heroic farm lad who becomes paladin for Miss Gish during her tribulations while abiding in his home. 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. Filmed on Long Island in the dead of Winter, the performers were in real peril. These scenes still pack a punch and are worthy testimony to Griffith's genius.

Special mention should be made of the cinematography of G. W. Bitzer, Griffith's invaluable cameraman. His beautiful photography softly illumines both the tender scenes and the bucolic vistas, giving them the quality of aged snapshots in a cherished family album.

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. "Way Down East" is the fourth highest grossing silent film in cinema history, taking in more than $4.5 million at the box office in 1920. That is an astounding number, and to be ranked fourth... it would probably today not be considered Griffith's best, and to think it easily out-performed Chaplin and Keaton...

Similar to other Griffith productions, "Way Down East" was subjected to censorship by some American state film censor boards. For example, the Pennsylvania film board required over 60 cuts in the film, removing the mock marriage and honeymoon between Lennox and Anna as well as any hints of her pregnancy, effectively destroying the film's integral conflict. Exactly how the film could make any sense without the core of its plot is beyond me.

D.W. Griffith's lengthy silent melodrama about a naive young woman from the country who is taken advantage of by a cad. Later she finds love with a nice, sweet boy but her past comes back to haunt her. 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. The opening title cards inform us men were never meant to be monogamous but we should try to be because Jesus said so...or something like that. Show that to your grandma's church group.

Star Lillian Gish is terrific at expressing emotions with her face and body. Few actresses, silent era or since, have been able to convey so much without words. Then we have her performance in the climax. Watching Gish fling herself about in the ice and snow, knowing it caused permanent physical damage to her hand...well it's a disturbingly impressive dedication to one's craft. She really is one of the all-time greats. Babyfaced Richard Barthelmess and the rest of the cast are also good.

On the negative side it is slow-going, particularly in the first half, with a lot of drawing room stuff and side visits through the local corn. As the film goes along, it becomes darker and more interesting, culminating in the justifiably famous snow storm finale with special effects provided by Mother Nature. Definitely worth a look for anyone who wants to see the best of the silent era, but I would advise against starting here. This is the type of film you need to be used to the silent movie pros & cons before attempting to watch it. That first hour or so is likely to drive away impatient viewers.

One of the greatest movies ever - 1920 - was a big commercial success - one of Griffith's last and biggest hits - Lillian Gish is astounding - the score is powerful- Griffith and cinematographer Billy Bitzer put on a clinic - it was restored in its original tint by Museum of Modern Art

Gish and Barthlemess are great, though the latter is probably not on screen often enough and the former might have been on too long. At moments it seemed that Griffith was overindulging in closeups of Gish's wonderfully expressive face. The title cards are typically moralistic and tend to force the story into Griffith's allegory. The main problem though is the introduction of "comic relief." The scenes are simply not funny and needlessly strain our attention span. And if one asks -- didn't people think they were funny then? -- maybe. But the Keystone Cops, Keyton, Chaplin, and Lloyd are still funny. I was intrigued by the Gish character's affinity with Ophelia. Both young women are wronged by their lovers (though the Hamlet-Ophelia relationship is never clear). And Gish, seeing the river, receives the title-card "Frenzied -- Tortured -- The calling river." Fortunately, she does not drown in that wonderfully crosscut and gripping sequence. The only Hamlet director I know of who puts Ophelia into a winter river is Branagh in his film. Kate Winslett finds a hole in the ice in which to drown herself -- assuming she does so intentionally. One reviewer has noted the relationship between the Gish character and the typical Hardy heroine. The reviewer cites Tess, but Eustacia in Return of the Native actually drowns in a river. I also note a parallel between the Gish character and the hapless Roberta Alden of Dreiser's An American Tragedy. Although that novel did not appear until 1925, poor Roberta also drowns, pregnant and in a lake. The music of the copy I watched on TCM was lugubrious but it was fun to hear some of the songs my grandfather sang -- the recurring theme "Believe me if all those endearing young charms," along with "In the Gloaming" and "Love's Old Sweet Song."

As Gish once said, ".......Silent movies were well on their way to developing an entirely new art form. It was not just pantomime, but something wonderfully expressive." It is that expressive ability, which in Talking Movies and still today, more than any other characteristic, defines the success of an actor or actress. As it was back then referred to as "The Look", this ability was Gish's trademark, and has never been done better by anyone. In Way Down East, she set the benchmark for this ability. In my opinion, the best work of her career. If you haven't seen it, do, and you'll wonder who in screen history can rival "Her Look".

Anna (Lillian Gish), is a poor country girl who arrives at her rich auntie's mansion to ask for money. The spoiled, womanising Lennox Sanderson (Lowell Sherman), is bored with seducing upper-class girls and becomes infatuated by Anna. Seeing that she a moral, God-fearing woman, Lennox proposes to her and arranges a sham marriage. Anna becomes pregnant, only for Lennox to reveal his scheme and kick her out, and Anna's baby dies. Lost and emotionally damaged, Anna wanders to a nearby farm, ran by Squire Bartlett (Burr McIntosh) and his scripture-quoting wife Mother (Kate Bruce). 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. As questionable as his political and racial views were, he is one of cinema's true innovators, and even here, back in 1920, he employs an early Technicolor process and an eye for epic cinema. Yet the film hasn't dated well at all, and the religious and moral preaching, and the over-use of title cards, makes the film ridiculously old- fashioned and tedious. This is Griffith's ode to the idea that God created one woman for every man, and states it is a story of women everywhere, who suffer at the hands of men's selfish womanising. 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. It even holds up today, with the lack of CGI effects or actors on wires making it even more impressive, and it's all captured beautifully by Billy Bitzer and Hendrik Sartov's cinematography. And Gish, one of the most successful and hard-working actresses in film history (and one of the few survivors of the death of the silent era) is exceptional. Her timid Anna is beaten down at every turn by the amoral upper classes, who, in Griffith's eyes, are defying God with their whoring and luxurious, indulgent lives. Yet overall, at 145 minutes, the film drags, especially when Griffith shifts his concentration on various supporting sub-plots, that play out like intrusive and uninteresting vignettes. Certainly worth seeing for some fine technical work and the captivating Gish, but not a film I can see myself needing to watch again.

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I just finished watching Way Down East. It was extremely powerful and moving. Gish is at her best, and while she may take getting used to if you've never seen her before, because she is a bit twittery, she is also a unique beauty with enormously expressive eyes and nervous mannerisms that make her perfect in this role as the poor innocent done wrong by the sophisticated older man. Like they say, the story's as old as the hills, and I was surprised but pleased at the happy ending, considering she had a baby out of wedlock--usually women were punished in the old films, even if it wasn't their fault. Little things like Richard Barthelmess petting a pigeon on the head, blossoms bouncing gently in the breeze, the play of light at sunset through Gish's hair as she stands by the river.... There's an appreciation of the beauty of nature and the gentle aspects of the human soul that's not much seen anymore. Just watching the men haying in the fields, the old barn dance, a horse and sled heading down a long avenue of tall trees is a pleasure, a record of days gone by that we don't get much chance to see anywhere else. Of course Gish floating down the river on the ice in the denouement is a classic. I highly recommend this film to any sensitive movie-lover.

Lillian Gish is regarded as probably the best actress of the silent era, and there's a good reason for that. As Elsie Stoneman in 'The Birth of a Nation', she appears as a reasonably serious and strong woman. As Anna Moore in 'Way Down East', she is a much more fragile and vulnerable character. This versatility is the mark of a good performer, and Lillian Gish has got it. It is mostly her presence that makes this a memorable film.

Anna Moore is a young naive girl who lives with her mother. When they begin to experience financial difficulties, Anna goes to visit some rich relatives, hoping to get assistance. During the visit, she meets the womanising Lennox Sanderson. To her, it's love. To him, it's just another adventure. Lennox deviously organises a mock marriage ceremony, and after Anna becomes pregnant, the truth comes out and he abandons her. Anna then leaves home and finds work on a farm. She doesn't know it, but Lennox lives close by and, inevitably, the two cross paths again.

'Way Down East' is not a classic, but is worth a look. The emotional elements in the film aren't given quite enough attention to leave any real impact, and the film does drag in certain spots and is about half an hour too long. The characters are well defined though, and D W Griffith punctuates the film with some amusing comical moments.

I haven't felt as though I've been preached at, preached to, for a very long time as much as I felt that verbal and visual oration last night watching "Way Down East" (1920), the legendary D. W. Griffith film starring Lilian Gish, Richard Barthelmess, Burr McIntosh, Lowell Sherman, and so many others. Well over fifty years ago, this was one of the first three silent features I ever watched. I've seen it a couple of times in the interim, but it's been a while now until yesterday again.

I'll not preach to the choir of silent enthusiasts, although I must admit that I came away wondering what gen X, or whatever the euphemism is for the current generation, would think seeing this today for the first time, especially if they knew little of silent film history, or any. The film has become, after 104 years, a genuine relic. An historical relic, yes, but definitely a relic. It's a rural piece for starters. It's a time and place set in a rural maritime Eastern coastal region of the United States, probably Maine, and sometime in the 1890s. The work is based on a play first produced in 1898, written by Charlotte (Lottie) Blair Parker. It's relevance to the current world for most will be nil. The theme is a form of parable about true marriage, true love, chastity, simplicity, and just plain goodness. One of the things it deals with in spades is the country gossip, not just one person, but a culture of it. No one can identify with that today in a world where instantaneous chat forums create instant news, disinformation, information, or gossip that can reach a world audience in a matter of seconds.

The scene where Anna's (Lilian Gish) baby dies is absolutely heart-rending. Gish gives it her all at this moment. All the rest of the film Gish emotes and emotes and emotes, genuinely but profusely, and she's given full facial camera inspection by G. W. "Billy" Bitzer, close-ups that dominate the picture. Frankly, it's a little much today, but in 1920 was probably awe inspiring. Gish is truly beautiful in this film, a loveliness that shows through the plainness she many times portrays in other films. Barthelmess certainly isn't as simple as he tries to seem in this film. His waxy Hollywood handsomeness belies the fact of his rural farm boy character, but he's quite good. Charming might be the term. Burr McIntosh, as the patriarch of the farm family who takes in Gish as a worker after she's been jilted and abandoned by her non-husband (Lowell Sherman) who's faked their marriage unknowingly to Gish and she's had his baby, is about as stout and stolid, abrupt and "quick-on-the-draw", old fashioned, rather close-minded, and a true country bumpkin as can be, though big enough to be reactionary if needed. His wife, definitely a "widdle woman" and a gospel memorizing, loving individual, simply a "folk", is played by Griffith's old standby, Kate Bruce.

The ice-floe scene still plays. It's now antiquated, but it's a wow.

The film is divided into two parts. Part I is far too long. It needed to be edited to half its size. Part II finally gets the pace up to snuff. The film, as is, still lasts two hours, twenty-five minutes. Several scenes are missing, though the Kino Lorber print of years past has filler titles that give information as to what is missing.

A really fascinating piece of film for its age. The greatest survival of the film is it's social history, much of which was antique by the time of this film, probably much of which was very old-fashioned in 1898 - to the city folk going to theaters then. As I've said, it's a relic, but it's a good one. The camera transitions one from the 10s to the 20s, but Griffith had already done better with the previous year's "Broken Blossoms". Recommended, but be prepared to be back in the early days of the 20th century in morals and mores and country culture.