Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Way Down East (1920)

This adaptation of the creaky, old melodrama, directed by D.W. Griffith, stars Lillian Gish and Richard Barthelmess, with Lowell Sherman, Burr McIntosh, Florence Short, Kate Bruce, Vivia Ogden, Porter Strong and Creighton Hale.

This Blu-ray Disc 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. The digital restoration allows an average amount of dust, speckling, vertical scratches, emulsion chipping and scuffing, frame jitters, visible splices, and other print flaws to remain in the picture. There is some nitrate decomposition and missing footage is indicated by bridging title cards and dialog intertitles.

The film is accompanied by a fine musical score compiled from historic photoplay music by Rodney Sauer and performed by The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. We are happy that the 2008 score has been retained for this edition.

Supplemental material includes exerpts from the source play by Lottie Blair Parker (16 images); notes on the play (14 images); an image gallery of the 1903 stage play souvenir program book (15 images); the ice floe sequence from Edison’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1903) (1 minute); an image gallery of the 1920 souvenir program book for Griffith’s film (14 images); notes on the musical score by Rodney Sauer (6 images); an image gallery of photographs and adverting materials (12 images).

This is our recommended home video edition of the film.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region A Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region A Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region A Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.co.uk. Support Silent Era.

This DVD 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. Some print decomposition exists in some scenes and there is missing footage that is indicated by bridging title cards and dialog intertitles.

The film is accompanied by a fine musical score compiled from historic photoplay music by Rodney Sauer and performed by The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.

The supplemental section includes exerpts from the source play by Lottie Blair Parker (16 images); an image gallery of the 1903 stage play souvenir program book (20 images); the ice floe sequence from Edison’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1903) (1 minute); an image gallery of the 1920 souvenir program book for Griffith’s film (23 images); notes on the musical score by Rodney Sauer (8 images); an image gallery of photographs and adverting materials (15 images).

If you are still sold on DVD, this is the best DVD home video edition of the film we have viewed.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.co.uk. Support Silent Era.

This early DVD edition features a video transfer from a good 16mm source print. Mysteriously, the picture is letterboxed and chops off some of the top and a substantial amount of the bottom of the original image. There is some image instability and evidence of print wear, including scratches and emulsion chipping. There is also some nitrate decomposition, lost highlights detail, and the usual amount of dust and speckling.

The film is accompanied by the Vitaphone music score compiled by Louis Silvers from the film’s 1928 American rerelease, which begs the question whether the source print itself originates from the 1928 release.

This was, at one time, the only DVD edition of the film available and was recommended but it has now been surpassed by better (by far) home video editions noted above. Even in 1998, when DVDs were still a brand new format, this edition was a disappointment (as was its sister laserdisc edition).

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

The film is likely accompanied by a modern music score.

North American collectors will need a region-free PAL DVD player capable of outputting an NTSC-compatible signal to view this edition.

United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 2 PAL DVD edition from Amazon.co.uk. Support Silent Era.

The film is likely accompanied by a modern music score.

North American collectors will need a region-free PAL DVD player capable of outputting an NTSC-compatible signal to view this edition.

United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 2 PAL DVD edition from Amazon.co.uk. Support Silent Era.

This budget DVD 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 greyed 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.

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.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

The film is likely to be accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from preexisting recordings.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

The film is presented with an orchestral music score taken from the source print’s optical soundtrack.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available from Reelclassicdvd.com through . . .

Other silent era LILLIAN GISH films available on home video.