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Way Down East (1920), color-toned black & white, 149 minutes, not rated. Kino International, no catalog number, unknown UPC number. |
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This edition of D.W. Griffith’s Way Down East (1920) is presented from the Museum of Modern Art 35mm restoration of the film, transferred in high-definition, with musical accompaniment by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. The supplemental section includes exerpts from the source play by Lottie Blair Parker, and the ice floe sequence from Edison’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1903).
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Way Down East (1920), color-toned black & white, 147 minutes, not rated. Film Preservation Associates, distributed by Image Entertainment, |
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We have not seen this disc. But we have viewed this full-frame transferred presentation in its laserdisc edition. Based on that quality of that laserdisc, we recommend this DVD edition.
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Way Down East (1920), color-toned black & white, 145 minutes, Classification U. Eureka Entertainment, unknown catalog number, unknown UPC number. |
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This high-quality PAL edition appears to be a British edition of the David Shepard-produced edition from Image noted above.
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Way Down East (1920), color-toned black & white, 145 minutes, Classification U, Eureka Entertainment, unknown catalog number, unknown UPC number. |
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This PAL boxset edition includes the above-noted Eureka edition of Way Down East, plus four other Griffith films from Eureka.
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Way Down East (1920) [1930 rerelease version], black & white, 126 minutes, not rated. Alpha Video, ALP 4513D, UPC 0-89218-45139-2. Ratings (1-10): video: 4 / audio: 4 / additional content: 1 / overall: 4. |
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Alpha Video has taken the initiative on its 2004 releases of silent films (unheard of from other budget disc producers) to begin including custom music scores by Paul David Bergel. And while the synthesizer scores are not impressive (they sound like off-the-cuff improvizations), they are better than listening to cobbled-together music soundtracks taken from preexisting recordings. If we were choosing an edition to purchase, we would of course choose the older Image edition above. If a collector is budget conscious, this edition (soft and dark as it is) is viewable.
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Way Down East (1920) [1928 rerelease version], black & white, 105 minutes, not rated. Reel Classic, unknown catalog number, no UPC number. |
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This DVD-R edition has likely been mastered from a 16mm reduction print, with an orchestral music score. This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R disc is available directly from Reel Classic. |
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| Other D.W. GRIFFITH films available on home video.
Other silent era LILLIAN GISH films available on home video. Other silent era RICHARD BARTHELMESS films available on home video. |
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| Lillian Gish filmography in The Progressive Silent Film List | |||||||||||||
2008 Kino International edition
2001 Eureka Entertainment edition
2002 Eureka Entertainment edition
This budget edition of Way Down East. from Alpha Video has been mastered from a 16mm reduction print of good quality, but the print is flat, with plugged shadows and grayed highlights, and has the usual problems of older 16mm prints: tight cropping, a slightly jittery picture, dust, speckling, print scratches, and soft image details. The dark full-frame, natural-speed video transfer is passable, and the disc’s video compression is higher than usual — that being the result of squeezing a film of this length onto a single layer DVD — resulting in some artifacts that will be seen by the eagle-eyed viewer, especially on an HD monitor. That being said, we have seen worse discs than this one. And, with a little adjustment of a television’s brightness and contrast controls, this edition is at very least watchable.| Silent Era Home Page > Home Video > Way Down East || Top of Page |
