Way Down East

With the gathering together of a relatively small cast and less than half a dozen stellar film artists, D.W. has taken a simple, elemental, old-fashioned, bucolic melodrama and milked it for 12 reels of absorbing entertainment.

[Lillian Gish's] virtuoso performance makes the heroine's growth from gullible innocence to bitter experience credible.

What's amazing is that so much of Gish's tough, funny, intuitive performance, particularly in the film's middle section as she bears her illegitimate child, transcends time, place and technology.

Through his star, Lillian Gish, Griffith gives the story an emotional power that lifts this 1920 silent feature to the level of a folktale; it becomes something simple, strong, and timeless.

Justly celebrated for the climactic sequence where Gish, drifting unconscious on a raft of ice in a storm, is rescued by Barthelmess, the film offers many less obvious moments that are just as memorable.

Spectacular to look at, emotionally engaging and with a conclusion that still sends a shiver down the spine.

One of Griffith's most rousing visions of film as visual-emotional ebb and flow, connection and rupture

This is melodramatic soap opera at its most blatant and at its very best.

If you are not moved at the scene of Gish baptizing her dead baby, then you should check the obituaries of your local paper to see if you are listed.

Old-fashioned bucolic soap opera doesn't translate well to modern-times.

Classic feminist film

The movie is today noted chiefly for its legendary climactic episode: a harrowingly realistic sequence in which the hero hurdles a succession of floating ice blocks to save the heroine from being washed over the falls.