Gish and Barthlemess are great, though the latter is probably not on screen often enough and the former might have been on too long. At moments it seemed that Griffith was overindulging in closeups of Gish's wonderfully expressive face. The title cards are typically moralistic and tend to force the story into Griffith's allegory. The main problem though is the introduction of "comic relief." The scenes are simply not funny and needlessly strain our attention span. And if one asks -- didn't people think they were funny then? -- maybe. But the Keystone Cops, Keyton, Chaplin, and Lloyd are still funny. I was intrigued by the Gish character's affinity with Ophelia. Both young women are wronged by their lovers (though the Hamlet-Ophelia relationship is never clear). And Gish, seeing the river, receives the title-card "Frenzied -- Tortured -- The calling river." Fortunately, she does not drown in that wonderfully crosscut and gripping sequence. The only Hamlet director I know of who puts Ophelia into a winter river is Branagh in his film. Kate Winslett finds a hole in the ice in which to drown herself -- assuming she does so intentionally. One reviewer has noted the relationship between the Gish character and the typical Hardy heroine. The reviewer cites Tess, but Eustacia in Return of the Native actually drowns in a river. I also note a parallel between the Gish character and the hapless Roberta Alden of Dreiser's An American Tragedy. Although that novel did not appear until 1925, poor Roberta also drowns, pregnant and in a lake. The music of the copy I watched on TCM was lugubrious but it was fun to hear some of the songs my grandfather sang -- the recurring theme "Believe me if all those endearing young charms," along with "In the Gloaming" and "Love's Old Sweet Song."
Review of Way Down East
