Way Down East (1920)

It's been a long time since I last viewed this silent classic from director D. W Griffith and I had forgotten just how much comedy light relief was included, with country bumpkins and hick dialect.  At 145 minutes the film would have been a more moving masterpiece (not that it's still not moving) without these scenes, but perhaps audiences of the time needed some respite from the tragedy being played out.  However, since the film was based on a theatrical warhorse, an extravaganza with barnyard frolics, Griffith might have felt the necessity to include these regardless.  The story is well known with our naive heroine played by Lillian Gish (the epitome of silent stars with her soulful eyes and wee rosebud mouth) trapped into a make-believe marriage with the dastardly Lowell Sherman.  He gets bored and leaves her, and the baby that she is carrying dies.  Thrown out of her lodgings because she has no husband, she finds work with a bible-fearing family, and despite the proximity of cad Sherman, she is accepted by them and their son, Richard Barthelmess, who comes to love her.  However local gossips ensure that her past catches up with her and she is driven out into a raging snowstorm.  The final climax of Gish on a breaking ice floe being chased over the ice by Barthelmess is one of the all-time greats and an inspiration for similar scenes in Russian films.  Not for Griffith any studio make-believes (or what nowadays would be handled by CGI) and the cast really played out the scene on a freezing river.  I've seen Gish tell how she lay for hours with her hair in frozen water until Griffith was satisfied with the image.  You wouldn't get that sort of dedication from a star nowadays.