Way Down East
Short description
Anna Moore, a young woman from a small New England town, travels to Boston to seek help from wealthy relatives. There she meets Lennox Sanderson, a rich and charming man whose attentions win her over. Their marriage ceremony is a sham arranged by Lennox, and once Anna becomes pregnant he abandons her. Left to cope with the stigma of a child born outside marriage, she later finds work as a servant on the farm of Squire Bartlett, where the family's son David falls in love with her. Her past keeps her from accepting his advances, and the deception continues to shape her life.
Directed by D.W. Griffith from a screenplay he wrote with Anthony Paul Kelly, the film follows Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl and precedes Abraham Lincoln among the director's six credited features listed here. Lillian Gish plays Anna opposite Richard Barthelmess as David, with Lowell Sherman as Lennox Sanderson, Burr McIntosh as Squire Bartlett, and Kate Bruce as Mother Bartlett among a credited cast of 23. It was produced by Griffith's own company and released through United Artists.
Way Down East proved a major commercial success, taking in roughly five million dollars worldwide at a time when a ticket cost a fraction of that. On IMDb it holds a 7.3 rating from around 6,300 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 7 from 118 votes. A critics' rating of 8.3 from 25 reviews places it somewhat above the audience scores, though all three indicate a well-regarded film.
What's left behind the scenes
- During the filming of the scenes with ice floes, a fire had to be lit under the camera to warm it up and allow it to function.
- The film has no opening or closing credits. Moviegoers were given programs listing all the key characters in descending order of their importance to the plot.
- The scene in the finale with ice floes floating on the surface and falling from the waterfall was filmed in warm weather, so the ice floes were props made of wood. The waterfall itself was only a few feet high.
- A long shot in the film shows Niagara Falls, which has nothing to do with the location where the scenes with ice floes were filmed.
- Clarine Seymour regularly worked with D.W. Griffith during those years, and she was initially cast as Kate here. Seymour played almost all of her character's scenes, but towards the end of filming, she fell ill and died of pneumonia on April 25, 1920. Griffith replaced her with Mary Hay.
- Lillian Gish later recounted that during the filming of the final scene on the river, her hair froze and broke after being in the icy water, and her hand, which was also submerged, ached constantly afterward.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
