D.W. Griffith made his five greatest pictures with Lillian Gish as his muse. She starred in The Birth of a Nation (1915), Intolerance (1916), Broken Blossoms (1919), Way Down East (1920) and Orphans of the Storm (1921). While C.B. DeMille was making extravagant escapist entertainment with Gloria Swanson, Griffith and Gish were striving to create ART.

Way Down East is about a young girl from the country. She lives with her ailing mother and they are very poor. The girl goes off to the city to beg for financial assistance from rich relatives that want nothing to do with her. She meets a wealthy man who pretends to fall in love with her, then he stages a fake wedding and takes advantage of her innocence. She gets pregnant and then learns that the wedding was a sham and that she is now an outcast from decent society.

She returns to her mother with the tragic news. Her mother soon dies and the poor girl is left alone in the world with a small baby to raise. Her baby isn't long for this world however. So the girl is once again alone. She meets a religious family that lives on a farm and they take her in, being unaware of her scandalous past of course. The grown son of this family quickly begins to fall for the new girl who seems incredibly sweet and such a hard worker.

Of course her secret comes out eventually and the girl, in the midst of despair and shame, is told to leave by the patriarch. She gets lost in a blizzard and winds up on an ice flow in a river heading for a waterfall. The boy comes to the rescue and his family, overcome with guilt at the way they have behaved, welcomes the girl back into their home with open arms. The movie ends with her wedding to the boy.

Lillian Gish was probably the greatest dramatic actress of the silent era. The scene where her baby dies in her arms is brilliant. The way she realizes that his tiny hands have grown cold, then begins blowing on them and rubbing them. Finally she cannot deny the truth any longer and she collapses in hysterics. Too bad the Oscars weren't around yet because she deserved to win for this one. She even suffered permanent damage to her right hand from trailing it in the icy water for so many hours during the shooting of the climax. Talk about suffering for your art.

As emotionally powerful as this movie is it is not without its flaws. It is a bit longer than it needs to be and there are a few inappropriate attempts at slapstick that seem forced and out of place. Richard Barthelmess is good as the hero. He had such matinee idol looks. But this movie is really a one woman show for Gish.

As a movie director D. W. Griffith was truly a visionary and Way Down East ranks as one of his five greatest pictures.

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