Way Down East Review #1

After my first foray into silent film with Birth of a Nation, I was looking forward to my second movie Way Down East. It sounded so scandalous – sham marriages, an illegitimate child, betrayal, false identities, and the corruption of innocence all set in 1920. DW Griffith did not disappoint and Lillian Gish gave a stellar performance as Anna Moore, an inexperienced country bumpkin and ultimately fallen woman in search of her voice and place in society. There were three main scenes that stood out for me. (Don’t read if you don’t want to know what happens).

Lennox Sanderson, a wealthy playboy who is good at three things – Ladies, Ladies and LADIES, dupes the young Anna Moore into a fake marriage just so he can get her in bed. After Anna reveals her pregnancy to him, Sanderson admits to her that they were never married and the next sequence of scenes gave me chills as Anna realizes just how screwed she is – knocked up and without a husband in 1920! After giving birth to her baby, there is a scene in which the child is sick and Anna tries to warm him. She keeps rubbing the baby’s hands when the doctor comes in and tells her the child is cold because he is dead. Took my breath away.

We see Anna change throughout the film from a naive girl to one more aware of the realities of the world. Ultimately, she finds her voice and in another favorite scene of mine, she denounces Sanderson as a seducer who preyed upon her innocence. After the family with whom she had been living discovers her past, they kick her out of the house. Sanderson, of course, was at dinner and as Anna leaves, nearly without saying a word, she turns and says, “You found out so much! Why didn't you find out the whole truth? That I was an ignorant girl betrayed through a mock marriage. (Pointing at Sanderson) This man - an honored guest at your table - why don't you find out what HIS life has been? For HE is the man who betrayed me!” I cheered for Anna!

This then leads to, hands down, the best scene in the entire movie. Though Anna denounces Sanderson, she is still so filled with shame that she runs out into the night and the blizzard that rages. She staggers through the snow, we see close-ups of Gish nearly frozen, and then Anna sees the icy river “calling to her.” She passes out on a piece of ice which floats down the river toward a treacherous waterfall. David, her true love, hops from piece of ice to piece of ice trying to rescue her before she goes over the edge. Honestly, I didn’t have high hopes for Anna. I thought she was a goner. That’s usually what happens to those kinds of women. Ultimately, however, David rescues her. I read that this scene looks so real because it was actually filmed on location and that the stunts are real.

In the end, I’m not 100% sure of Griffith’s point. Is he trying to say the sexual double-standard between men and women is messed up, that it’s wrong that men can sow their oats and women can’t? Or is he trying to tell women that they should keep their panties on? I’m voting for option number 1. On my Netflix rating, I give this movie 4 stars (out of 5).