A simple story of plain people.
… within the heart of man, the truth must bloom that his
greatest happiness lies in his purity and constancy.
In her introduction Pamela Hutchinson found just the right
phrase as she always does, DW Griffith had paid some $165,000 for the rights to
this piece of old Victorian melodrama and presented its points in new ways, not
just cinematically but with an evolved narrative and the performative power of
his star. More than anyone, perhaps, the director is seen as a Victorian
moralist increasingly out of step with the changes in sentiment that were
rapidly taking place amongst his audience and catalysed by external events as
well as the messaging and style of the new media of which he was in some ways a
master.
Griffith has taken a battering in recent decades for work
that, even some contemporaries derided as racist and now, as we see new
elements of those old feelings rise again, his role in popularising them, the
sheet-wearing Klan and a-historical rumour mongering feels even more out of
place. He’s not the first nor last US director to play fast and loose with
history and, whilst he didn’t make the first feature film in history (that’d be
Australia’s Ned Kelly (1906)) or innovate as much as claimed he made
very good, very popular and very influential films of which Way Down East
is possibly the best example.
I was an ignorant girl betrayed through a mock marriage…
Whilst it is a major work, the only real genius on display
was at least a foot shorter than DW and with strawberry blonde ringlets. This
would be Lillian Gish who threw herself into this roles in ways that genuinely
makes you shudder and worry, as King Vidor did when she went full waif in La
Boheme, that it might not just be her character that was doomed. She is
spellbinding and creates so much more out of her character than even Antony
Paul Kelly’s script intended. She is the American Asta Neilsen with acting that
is completely unconscious of the camera as it radiates thought even sometimes
with the casual aid of an inanimate object held for a pensive second and
signifying so much.
As Pamela mentioned Gish was not the only one who doubted
Griffith’s investment but it wasn’t just Parker and Grismer’s original play
that was largely jettisoned but Kelly’s script too as the Director worked up
his narrative with his performers* albeit with his usual final say as when Gish
wanted to present her half-frozen face and arms after plunging them in the ice
floe towards the end. We get a glimpse of the Lilly-Ice (sorry) but sure enough
she’s soon got her hair back in order. A stunt person was used but still both
Gish and co-star Richard Barthelmess spent time on cardboard ice blocks and in
a freezing river. At one point the actress fainted and not surprisingly considering
her preparation involved walking about the frozen location without a coat and
preparing herself for the actual blizzard in which they filmed.
All of these moments make for one highly emotional
conclusion to a film that at almost two and a half hours, is not for the
faint-hearted. That this time flew by is down to the skill of the performers on
and off screen, with Stephen Horne providing yet another one-man orchestral
score off the hoof and covering this vast space and time with constantly evolving
mood and melody all played on three or was it four instruments (plucking the
piano strings definitely counts as extra).
Sanderson belongs to a class which, if it cannot get
what it wants in one way, it will go to any length to get it in another.
The story begins in rural, humble, in New England, where
a young woman, Anna Moore (Gish) is asked by her mother to go to appeal to
their rich relatives, the Tremonts, in Boston for money. She arrives all naïve just
as her aunt Emma Tremont (Josephine Bernard) is hosting a party. Condescended
to by her cousins she has some support from her stylish blue stocking sister (Florence
Short) aka The Eccentric Aunt, who gets her up to speed with fashion with one Madame
Lisette providing Miss Gish’s stunning array of gowns – was she ever this well
dressed in any other film?
Trouble comes in the form of the dashing Lennox Sanderson
(Lowell Sherman), who not only sponges off his rich daddy, but spends his time
in pursuit of his speciality: “ladies”. He becomes fascinated by Anna and after
gaining her trust arranges a phony marriage ceremony so he can have his evil
way with her. If this seems a bit convoluted it’s worth remembering the source
material and the need for the most elaborate humiliation possible for our lead
character. Telling her that they need to keep their marriage a secret for fear
of his father disinheriting him, he puts Anna up in an apartment and then, once
she gets pregnant, abandons her to a boarding house
As all this progresses we have been gradually introduced to the family of Squire Bartlett (Burr McIntosh) the richest farmer around but a man by the kind of unyielding Christian principles you’d expect to find in a DW Griffith film, just not in this context. He comes complete with a kindly wife (Kate Bruce) and a handsome son David (Richard Barthelmess)… I’m sure you think you know where this is headed… There’s also a gaggle of comedy characters which serve to pad out the plot but also to create an uneven tone from time to time. There’s the gurning Constable Rube Whipple (George Neville), bumkins "Hi" Holler (Edgar Nelson) and Seth Holcomb (Porter Strong) who is kind of being romanced by the scene-stealing entity known as Martha Perkins (the most excellent Vivia Ogden!).
Incoming key sub-plot reveal… the Squire’s niece, Kate (Mary
Hay) is a live wire who has attracted the attention of, erm, local academic The
Professor (played by Creighton Hale in that Creighton Hale sort of way,
actually very funny on this occasion!). But more on these two in a few lines…
Back in the boarding house, Anna’s baby gets ill and Gish goes into overdrive nursing the poor scrap and is genuinely heart-rending when her efforts come to nought. Pamela was correct, this is not a film you can watch without shedding a tear – hence it’s screening as part of the BFI’s Too Much: Melodrama on Film season – and the sadness here is almost unbearable. As the beat goes on, Anna’s landlady Mrs Poole (Emily Fitzroy) without a scintilla of pity condemns her guest for having a baby – albeit now a dead one – and for not being married, telling her to pack her bags.
Cue poverty and Anna’s forlorn trudge to find some place to
work and stay before she, just about, gets work with the Bartletts, Mother and
David calling on the Squire to give her a chance after she almost walks away.
Things are looking up as she proves herself a hard-working asset until,
inevitably, Lennox turns up… a neighbour of the Bartletts and someone with
bigger fish to fry socially than an old conquest, not to mention his lecherous
plans for young Kate. It’s all set up for a doozy of a second half…
Without a doubt it’s one of Griffith’s best and indeed Gish’s
and whilst she may well have been watching the acting of Asta, other influences
may also have impacted the narrative and style here, not least perhaps the more
advanced moralising of Griffiths’ contemporary Lois Weber. It’s quite a shock
to see Gish’s character turn the tables on her accuser and ask: This man –
an honoured guest at your table – why don’t you find out what HIS life has
been? For Griffith the moral is about civilised mankind becoming monogamous
and faithful under their god but this is a more basic call to a kind of neo-feminist
equality of responsibility. When first confronting Lennox he asks her what
would happen if her new friends found out about her past life and she
immediately shoots back with “Suppose the find out about YOUR past life!”.
He takes it in his stride, smiles and smarms “Oh, it’s different with a MAN!
He’s supposed to sow his wild oats.”
This feels more Gish than Griffith but either way it’s a
direct hit on the Patriarchy where you least expect it. Anna’s driven by a rage
of frustrated indignity at the unfairness of her situation and the fact that through
no fault of her own she is denied happiness in the arms of the decent David, who
is even better without the yellowface of the previous year’s Broken Blossoms…)
and one can only imagine how Gish directed her sister Dorothy in Remodeling
Her Husband (1920) – a lost film that represents her only feature as
director made just before Way Down East. Lillian Gish was at the peak of
her powers, a master of cinema.
Another potential influence on this film was from northern
Europe with the style of Victor Sjostrom in films like the unforgiving The
Outlaw and His Wife (1918) as well as the cinematography of everyone’s
go-too Swedish cameraman, Julius Jaenzon. Sjostrom used locations to reflect
externalised emotions and Way Down East’s extraordinary climax partially
filmed in an actual blizzard and with Lil on those ice floes, is a still forceful
depiction of humanity pushed to the edge of endurance by the torment of others
and societal cruelty: a cry for forgiveness and understanding lest we crush
love and natural justice.
Boston born Johann Gottfried Wilhelm “Billy” Bitzer excels throughout
the film capturing Gish’s emoting in frequent close up as well as the glorious
countryside and the frozen expanse of Vermont. There are lovely scenes of Gish
and Barthelmess against a background of a lake and forests whilst White River
Junction and the ice floes of the Connecticut and White rivers, were used for
the big finish. The film was more expensive than either of Griffith’s best
known films and returned a huge profit being one of the four highest grossing
silent films.
This was my first viewing and I saw it in the right way - on 35mm, projected on the big screen with an informed and entertaining introdcution and with one of the finest accompanists in the silent show business! I thank you all!
*Martin Williams, DW Griffith: First Artist of the Movies
(OUP, 1980)
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