Way Down East | Full Movie | D. W. Griffith

D.W. Griffith's penchant for Victorian melodrama reached its height of expression in WAY DOWN EAST. First performed in 1898, Lottie Blair Parker's play was one of the most successful stageworks ever written, a theatrical chestnut, heavy with sentiment, that cried out for the touch of the master. Griffith captured the appeal of Parker's original, while embossing it with devices borrowed from other popular melodramas, such as the climactic chase across an ice floe (inspired by stage adaptations of Uncle Tom's Cabin).
Lillian Gish stars as a small-town girl who is seduced, impregnated, and cast aside by Lennox Sanderson, a wealthy playboy (Lowell Sherman). To escape the shame of having a fatherless child, Anna changes her name and starts a new life in a small farming community, where she meets David, an icon of male virtue and decency (Richard Barthelmess). Their delicate happiness is threatened when Lennox arrives in town, and word of Anna's unsavory past begins to spread.
#movie #film #drama #dwgriffith #silent #silentmovie #movies #freemovie #freemovies

[@markw4206]

What a treat to find this. Thank you for hosting it! I read beforehand that it was Gish's idea to have her hand dangling in the icy water during filming the ice floe scene, and that it left it impaired for life. What a sacrifice for art!

[@peponwi2716]

Lillian Gish is such a gem!

[@stephaniewhittle6269]

This is a gem, love this movie

[@rjmcallister1888]

I'm afraid Mr. Griffith would be sorely disappointed with how men (and even women) had declined in such behavior over the past century. Lillian Gish was so lovely; those eyes conveyed the emotions in a time when actors did not speak. Good that preservation started when it did; the cellulose was beginning to seriously decay.

[@fj103]

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