The Silver Screen Oasis

A couple of days ago, I watched Way Down East. Despite the really appalling comic relief, I enjoyed it very much, largely because of the beauty and sincerity of Lillian Gish's and Richard Barthelmess's performances, and for the chance to see again the iconic scene on the ice floe.

However, I do have a couple of quibbles/concerns:

The title cards; why did they have to be so verbose and preachy? Why couldn't Griffith trust his actors more? Sometimes when LG had just done an exquisite bit of acting along came a clunky title card which reductively spelt out what I had just seen for myself.

The editing: I've noticed before in DWG films (I watched Intolerance a couple of weeks ago, and saw it there as well), a curious stylistic feature. Often an action will be shown in medium shot and then close-up (or long shot and then medium). Say for example, it's Lillian Gish registering fear that the secret of her illegitimate baby is known to another character. We see her react in the first shot, and then she reacts again in the second shot in exactly the same way. Why do we need to see the action happen twice? Is there a reason for it?

Sometimes the editing also looked a bit careless. One scene has a horse refusing to climb a hill. When the driver climbs off the cart and walks up to the horse, we get a short of the horse's legs stubbornly planted on the ground - i.e.: refusing to go any further. But they are now facing towards the cart! The shot is facing completely the wrong way. It looks very strange.

What does anyone else think? Have you noticed it in other films of Griffith's?

I completely agree with you Phil Noir. The title cards on Way Down East are indeed very preachy. As for Griffith's editing, you are also right that his editing is very careless....This is something I discussed with Kevin Brownlow when I interviewed him last September. Here is what he said about Griffith's editing:

But also, Griffith was technically highly praised but in fact, could be extremely odd. His editing was unique. He knew narrative editing and that was extremely effective. But continuity editing, cutting from mid-shot to wide-shot. Say, a warrior unsheathing his sword, he does it twice. He overlaps it. Nobody else did that in Hollywood. They immediately got the idea that you make it a smooth transition that makes it almost seamless. So looking back at Griffith work, some of it looks extremely primitive. He’ll suddenly cut to a close-up against pure black in a studio, whereas the wide shot is outside! Maddening… And yet, he is undoubtedly brilliant with films like Broken Blossoms (1919), Intolerance (1916), True Heart Susie (1919). Absolutely amazing. And some of the Biographs are superb and stand up wonderfully today.

I remember the titles on Way Down East and Intolerance being very preachy. I can understand Intolerance to a degree, it's thought he was defending BOAN. He does go overboard with the preaching, perhaps it went over better in the '10's and just doesn't weather today.

If you haven't seen Broken Blossoms, that is the one that shows his greatness.

Thanks for your replies, Ann Harding & charliechaplinfan. Both very interesting.

I agree with Kevin Brownlow: it is 'maddening'! The change in backgrounds in close ups was another thing I noticed, but had forgotten about until I read it in your quote, Ann Harding.

I have seen Broken Blossoms, Alison, but it's a year or two since I last saw it, so I shall have to give it another watch. I still have the Thames Silents video that came out in the early '90s. It has the Carl Davis score and the introduction by Lillian Gish herself.

I revisited Broken Blossoms after I'd read more about Griffith's films, for me it's his best work.

If you want any recommended reading Karl Brown's book Adventures with D W Griffith is great, Brown was Bitzer's assistant and it's about as good as it gets for finding out about Griffith and what life was like in Hollywood in the teens. I got my copy from Amazon for pennies.

it was MELODRAMA for god's sake.... why wouldn't you expect it to be preachy? It was part of the style of melodrama.... stop nitpicking and appreciate the good things in Griffith's films.....

I've read that the 'black background' closeups were a conscious choice, so that the viewer would be focused solely on the actor's face and expressions.

I think it's very important to remember Way Down East was originally a play and was considered unfilmable by many who passed on the project. That Griffith achieved what he did with the material is remarkable. It remains my personal favorite of his work, even with the titles.

drednm wrote:it was MELODRAMA for god's sake.... why wouldn't you expect it to be preachy? It was part of the style of melodrama.... stop nitpicking and appreciate the good things in Griffith's films.....

I take your point about melodrama being a specfic genre, drednm, and that it brings with it certain stylistic conventions.

However, what one person considers nitpicking, someone else merely considers a couple of suggestions for discussion. If we can't ask questions or raise issues about the films we see, what is the point of a message board?

I made it clear in my original post that I appreciated Way Down East very much.

Dredm, we are appreciating Griffith's films, that's why we watch them and come here to discuss them. I'm sorry you take it as nitpicking, some of us just really enjoy the discussions.

I do appreciate Griffith but as I watch more silents I think silent film history has promoted his role in early film making to the detriment of other film makers. I find BOAN now I've seen it very uncomfortable viewing, my opinion, not everyone's.

Probably most people's, though. Actually, one of the things I've always found interesting about Griffith's films is what they say about the time when they were made. Some of them are more timeless, while others clearly show that they could only be a product of a certain time period in history. As William K Everson notes, Way Down East could only have been made between the period 1915 - 1923, perhaps? But I don't necessarily see that as something wrong. In fact, the way in which Way Down East works as a window to another era is one of the main reasons why I like it. As a matter of fact, Way Down East might have served as a window to a vanished era even in 1920 - after all, it's set in a world that's disappearing.

As for the editing, it's something both Kevin Brownlow and Richard Schickel noted, if I can remember right - I'm too lazy to look it up at the moment. It's kind of hard to say why a man who had such a great understanding of film making should not be bothered with simpler editing. As for the closeups, I always rather liked the one of Lillian Gish when she and Richard Barthlemess were sitting by the lake. It's very lovely, and it's a great opportunity for Lillian Gish to display her restrained emotion. As bdp says that was probably a conscious stylistic choice. Sometimes the incorporation of those scenes doesn't work as well, but I still wouldn't want to lose them.

When I compare Way Down East to True Heart Susie, a similar film, I like True Heart Susie better, even if it hasn't got the same epic scope. It's more tightly edited. It doesn't need to be bigger than it is, there's nothing about it that's tacked on. It was one of Griffith's smaller films, he wasn't under the same pressure to make a great epic. They're both good films though. Broken Blossoms is the best.

Btw, as others have noted, the purpose of this board is for discussion.

What's interesting about Griffith is that from THE BIRTH OF A NATION on, he seems incredibly interested in the editing as well as the story. Yet his two talkies, ABRAHAM LINCOLN and THE STRUGGLE are very badly edited. Maybe the editing was taken out of his control.

The stories about Griffith's making of BOAN are incredible. The massive battle scenes, which required thousands of extras were all filmed first because he had the money to pay them. Other scenes were filmed around the availability of the actors, notably Henry B. Walthall (who had a drinking problem but was was magnificent in the film) and various sets. The film was all marked or numbered, and when all the film was shot, Griffith edited the entire thing into the film we have today (more or less). Griffith didn't used a shooting script; he had it all in his head. An incredible achievement for so long and complicated a film.

Griffith finally had to threaten Walthall (who was 5-7 or so) with replacement as the "Little Colonel," but his choice was the strapping Wallace Reid (who was 6-2 or something). Reid had the smaller role of the heroic blacksmith. Ultimately Griffith hired guards to watch Walthall 24/7 until the film was done.

After INTOLERANCE I'm not sure Griffith personally edited his own films though he would have kept a close eye on the work. But as I remember them both SCARLET DAYS and THE WHITE ROSE seemed rather lose and rambling.
I don't see many problems with the editing of BROKEN BLOSSOMS or WAY DOWN EAST.

I've read what Lillan Gish had to say about DW Griffith, she obviously loved him. He pops up in other biographies and autobiographies of that era and in Karl Brown's marvellous book. He has been well documented but still, there seems to be a large part of him that is unknown or uncomprehended. Undoubtedly a genius but also a man who felt the highs and the very lows. The portrayal of race in BOAN leaves me feeling really uncomfortable, I'm sure he wasn't the only American director to portray African Americans in that way, it's just that he did it big budget and on a big scale. I don't think Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford or Karl Brown completely knew him. He's an enigma.

The "race" issues in BOAN are totally bogus and trumped up and don't bother me at all.... anyone who has read American history can plainly see that, "uncomfortable" as the situations may be that Griffith shows us, they are part of history. History can't be re-written to make us feel better about who we are and where we came from. History is history.

No, the 'race' issues are not bogus at all. Just because Griffith threw in historical names and places does not make it a historical film - it isn't, it's a polemic.