Theatrical melodrama, dramatic film, and the rise of American cinema: The case of Griffith's Way Down East

Abstract

Way Down East (1920) was made from a highly successfid stage play of the same name, written by Lottie Blair Parker, Joseph R. Grismer, and William A. Brady, which had its premiere at Newport, Rhode Island, on September 3, 1897, and was performed around the United States for more than twenty years. The Parker-Grismer-Brady play came at the end of a century in which the form of melodrama had dominated the American theater-so much so that it spawned several types, such as the rural melodrama of Way Down East. The film of Way Down East itself represents a landmark in the transition between two worlds: of intensive play structure and extensive film form, of Aristotelian drama and Eisensteinian cinema, of nineteenth-century theater culture and twentieth-century American film. This essay is an analysis of the important differences between the dramatic and cinematic versions of Way Down East and an evaluation of the movie in the context of American film history.