WAY DOWN EAST (DVD) DVD

Way Down East
"I'm not a bad businessman", filmmaker D.W. Griffith once protested, "Honestly I'm not!" Yet industryites were certain that Griffith had taken leave of his financial senses when he paid $175,000 for the screen rights to the old Lottie Blair Parker stage play Way Down East. Considered out of date even in 1920, the play told the story of Anna (Lillian Gish), the efficient yet secretive serving girl for a large farm family. Anna falls in love with David Bartlett (Richard Barthelmess), the family's son, but feels unworthy of him due to her checkered past. It seems that, years earlier, Anna had been duped into a sham marriage by city slicker Lenox Sanderson (Lowell Sherman). When she became pregnant, Sandson walked out on her. Shortly afterwards, her newborn child died, and Anna was shunned by her home community. These facts come to surface when Sanderson returns to Anna's life as the local squire. David's prudish father orders Anna out of the house and into a blinding snowstorm, but David, after settling accounts with the duplicitious Sanderson, goes after Anna and claims her as his bride. In adapting Way Down East for the screen, Griffith fleshes out the characters of Anna and Sanderson by adding a prologue, which included one of those poignant scenes ever filmed: Anna's tearful insistence that her dying baby be baptized. He also injected the weary old property with a jolt of sheer showmanship, added a "last minute rescue" sequences wherein Anna, lying exhausted on an ice floe, is rescued by David seconds before plunging over a precipitous waterfall. Even today's audiences, armed with the foreknowledge that Lillian Gish enjoyed 73 hale and hearty years after the completion of Way Down East, invariably gasp in fright and urge Richard Barthelmess to "hurry! hurry!"during the climactic scene. Far from becoming Griffith's Folly as predicted, Way Down East was a huge moneymaker. There is no better of Griffith's artistry than the fact that the 1930 talkie remake of Way Down East, though directed by the formidable Henry King, failed to match the pathos and power of the 1920 version. Our own quibble: why did Griffith retain so much of the original play's wheezy comedy relief, and why did he put that relief in the hands of the relentlessly unfunny Creighton Hale? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Cast Lillian Gish as Anna Moore Richard Barthelmess as David Bartlett Lowell Sherman as Lennox Sanderson Burr McIntosh as Squire Bartlett Creighton Hale as Prof. Sterling Kate Bruce as Mrs. Bartlett Mary Hay as Kate Brewster Emily Fitzroy as Maria Poole

Crew Charles Osborne Seessel - Art Director Frank Walsh - First Assistant Director Herbert Sutch - First Assistant Director D.W. Griffith - Director James Smith - Editor Rose Smith - Editor Louis Silvers - Composer (Music Score) William Frederick Peters - Composer (Music Score) Billy Bitzer - Cinematographer Hendrik Sartov - Cinematographer D.W. Griffith - Producer D.W. Griffith - Screenwriter Anthony Paul Kelly - Screenwriter

Way Down East
(not reviewed)
 

(no awards)

General Specifications: Language Options: Subtitle Options: English Sound Processing: 5.1: 5 full-range channels. Includes 3 for the front speakers, 2 surround channels for rear speakers, & 1 low-frequency effects (LFE) channel to carry deep bass effects 1: PCM mono Additional Features: none specified MPAA Rating: NR DVD Discs Included: 1 DVD Sides: 1 DVD DVD Region Code: 1 Content Length: 146 min   DVD Chapters: Main 1. Main title; a remote village in New England [7:31] 2. Anna arrives at Aunt Tremont's [5:37] 3. Chapter II: Bartlett Village [9:41] 4. Sanderson's proposal [11:10] 5. The post office has been robbed [4:57] 6. Chapter IV: Anna's great secret [10:36] 7. Anna in hiding [11:52] 8. In search of work [8:02] 9. Kate's homecoming [11:06] 10. Part I [12:04] 11. Her past revealed [3:48] 12. At the squires's [12:26] 13. The neighbor's barn dance [8:11] 14. The squire goes to Belden [3:54] 15. The whole truth [6:34] 16. And the storm [5:51] 17. The great ice break [6:09] 18. A happy Ending [5:21]