Way Down East ***** (1920, Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess, Lowell Sherman) – Classic Movie Review 9449

Producer-director D W Griffith’s 1920 heart-tugging black and white silent romantic drama Way Down East stars Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess and Lowell Sherman, and is based on a play by Lottie Blair Parker and William A Brady. It was a silent movie blockbuster, and remains a silent movie classic. In 2020, it celebrates the 100th anniversary of its New York premiere on 26 August 1920, US release on 3 September 1920 and UK release on 5 September 1921.

Lillian Gish plays pregnant naive country girl Anna Moore, who is trapped in a loveless marriage with wealthy womaniser Lennox Sanderson (Lowell Sherman) and, when the baby dies, she walks out to start a new life in a different town, where she meets David Bartlett (Barthelmess) who befriends her. Unknown to Anna, Sanderson arrives in town and soon everyone knows her past and she is branded a ’fallen woman’.

[Spoiler alert] After being ordered out of the Bartlett home, she falls exhausted by a river and is swept downstream on an ice-floe, only to be rescued in the nick of time by the hero, Bartlett.

Superior acting by Gish, who is heart-rending at the death of her child, and Griffith’s judicious editing save this famed silent film from being just sentimental. It is still captivating for lovers of silent cinema, and the ice-floe sequence is still breathtaking.

It also stars Mrs. David Landau as Anna Moore’s Mother and Burr McIntosh as Squire Bartlett. Also in the cast are Creighton Hale, Kate Bruce, Josephine Bernard, Mrs Morgan Belmont, Patricia Fruen, Florence Short, Vivia Ogden, Porter Strong, George Neville, Edgar Nelson, Mary Hay, and Emily Fitzroy,

Carol Dempster, Norma Shearer and Frank Walsh are among the Barn Dancers, and Paul Porcasi is a Party Guest.

It is remade as the talkie Way Down East by director Henry King in 1935, starring Rochelle Hudson and Henry Fonda.

It runs 145 minutes, or 107 minutes in the 1931 re-release, or 126 minutes in the video version.

Way Down East is directed by D W Griffith, runs 145 minutes, is made by D W Griffith Productions, is released by United Artists, is written by Anthony Paul Kelly (scenario), Joseph R Grismer (elaborated by) and D W Griffith (uncredited), based on a play by Lottie Blair Parker and William A Brady, is shot in black and white by G W Bitzer [Billy Bitzer] and Hendrik Sartov, and is produced by D W Griffith, with Art Direction by Clifford Pember and Charles O Seessel.

Griffith was derided when announced his plan to film this story, but the movie became the biggest box-office hit of 1920.

Lillian Gish may have been a silent movie superstar, but it is D W Griffith’s name that is on the poster.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9449

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