Way Down East

Ostenstaciously starting with a placard asserting that it's "a simple story of plain people", D. W. Griffiths' Way Down East is a warbling melodramatic epic with a typically biblical finger-wagging stance in regards to morality. Griffiths would have the viewer see the film as a treatise on the concept of monogamy as a true ideal to follow, with a sideline on the hypocrisy of the rich and male in relation to this standard. And it's all of these things, but as far as cautionary tales go you'll have to look past Griffiths' penchant for high-minded preaching. Subtlety isn't his strong point, but this boldness is also what sometimes makes Way Down East so grand.

Anna (Lillian Gish) represents poor and innocent girls everywhere, the sort preyed upon by selfish, parasitic men (represented by the character of Lennox, played by Lowell Sherman). Lennox fakes a wedding in order to shag naive Anna, and then dumps her once she's pregnant. Left to fend for herself, Anna's baby dies and she's forced to find work as a servant in the nearby town of Bartlett. Her past hangs over her like a shadow though, and she must hide her tragedies if she's to remain in the employ of the pious Squire Bartlett (Burr McIntosh).

Griffiths' tells a relatively big story over the film's 140 minutes with a good sense of pacing. He issues a lot of pompous statements like "Maternity - woman's gethsemane" but thanks to Gish's vivid doe-eyed performance as Anna it's easy to look past this sermonising. You'll rally around her as the injustice gets piled on thick and fast... a lot of the film concerns the appalling things that humans do to each other and the hypocrisy, intolerance and double-standards that lets them get away with it. The scene where Anna is alone with her dying baby is truly horrible.

The first half of the film plays out as thi sgrand tragedy that contrasts good-hearted country folk with fake, mean-spirited city people. After all the tragedy it then segues into a second act based around small-town life that's almost like a comedy of errors. Anna becomes an angelic presence on the Bartlett's farm despite Squire Bartlett's initial reservations, but her secrets loom behind her - threatening any chance of true happiness she might achieve with young David Bartlett (Richard Barthelmess), so she fears getting too close to him. This builds into a suspenseful crescendo before an exciting and nailbiting climax on a rushing river full of breaking ice (a tour-de-force sequence that was achieved without any special effects, and would have to go down as one of the true highlights of the silent era).

As mentioned, Griffiths can get a bit over the top at times, though he does make a fair point about the misuse of religion. Way Down East was chockful of dated Victorian values even by 1920, but it's reputation lives on thanks to the mesmerising Gish, bold strokes of pathos, and the fantastic ice floe scenes at the end.

DIRECTOR: D. W. Griffiths
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Anthony Paul Kelly and D. W. Griffiths, from a play by Lottie Blair Parker.
KEY ACTORS: Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess, Lowell Sherman, Burr McIntosh, Kate Bruce, Creighton Hale, Emily Fitzroy, Edgar Nelson

RELATED TEXTS:
- Way Down East started life as a popular 1897 play that ran until at least 1912, with over 4500 performances.
- Two shorter silent film versions of the story were produced in 1908 and 1914.
- A less successful sound version was made in 1935, starring Henry Fonda.
- Lillian Gish and D. W. Griffith made 42 films together - about ten of these were feature-length, and include the director's most famous films, The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, Broken Blossoms and Orphans of the Storm.
- For a more modern slant on naivete, sex and trickery, see An Education.