Lillian Gish once said that she got sick of playing "gaga-babies" for D.W. Griffith and longed to play women of the world rather than innocent naïfs. She then inadvertently paid herself a great compliment when she added that it was far harder to play this sort of role than a vamp because it was far harder to make such a character interesting. Through a combination of her talent and Grifftith's direction her gaga-babies, such as Anna Moore in "Way Down East" continue to compel audiences decades later, long after many of the great vamp roles (that, ironically, were once seen as a modern alternative to Griffith's good girl parts) have been forgotten.
In "Way Down East," Gish, in a story very reminiscent of Thomas Hardy's "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" plays a naïve country girl who suffers, among offer things, the snobbery of rich cousins, a sham marriage, an illegitimate pregnancy and social ostracization. Such sagas of innocence abused are the sort of thing sophisticated audiences love to hate (forgetting perhaps in the real world there are plenty of cases of innocence abused), but Gish somehow makes the melodrama believable, from her joy on her wedding night (that even makes her caddish seducer feel momentarily guilty), to her grief over her dead baby and most famously her fleeing into a blizzard after a local gossip has revealed the truth of her past to the farm family that has employed her. This last part in particular could have become very contrived in the hands of a lesser actress (the ice flow scenes practically beg for snide comparisons with "Uncle Tom's Cabin"), but perhaps because Gish in general avoids over-emoting we don't get the feeling that our feelings are being milked for the sake of sensationalism but rather that we are seeing a woman whose circumstances have earned her the right to lose emotional control. Gish is also helped by a good supporting cast including Lowell Sherman as the cad and Richard Barthlemass as the decent farm boy who courts Anna ,but particularly memorable is the gossip whose open glee when she learns the truth about Anna is chilling (here as in "Intolerance" Griffith recognizes that the zeal of the righteous often has more to do with the pleasure of crucifying wrongdoers than anything else.)
"Way Down East" bears comparison with Gish's better known films, but avoid the cheap Alpha DVD whose score consists of a few mournful bars of music played over and over.
In "Way Down East," Gish, in a story very reminiscent of Thomas Hardy's "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" plays a naïve country girl who suffers, among offer things, the snobbery of rich cousins, a sham marriage, an illegitimate pregnancy and social ostracization. Such sagas of innocence abused are the sort of thing sophisticated audiences love to hate (forgetting perhaps in the real world there are plenty of cases of innocence abused), but Gish somehow makes the melodrama believable, from her joy on her wedding night (that even makes her caddish seducer feel momentarily guilty), to her grief over her dead baby and most famously her fleeing into a blizzard after a local gossip has revealed the truth of her past to the farm family that has employed her. This last part in particular could have become very contrived in the hands of a lesser actress (the ice flow scenes practically beg for snide comparisons with "Uncle Tom's Cabin"), but perhaps because Gish in general avoids over-emoting we don't get the feeling that our feelings are being milked for the sake of sensationalism but rather that we are seeing a woman whose circumstances have earned her the right to lose emotional control. Gish is also helped by a good supporting cast including Lowell Sherman as the cad and Richard Barthlemass as the decent farm boy who courts Anna ,but particularly memorable is the gossip whose open glee when she learns the truth about Anna is chilling (here as in "Intolerance" Griffith recognizes that the zeal of the righteous often has more to do with the pleasure of crucifying wrongdoers than anything else.)
"Way Down East" bears comparison with Gish's better known films, but avoid the cheap Alpha DVD whose score consists of a few mournful bars of music played over and over.