Way Down East (1920), First Performance of MUSA Vol. 36

Way Down East. 1920. USA. Directed by D. W. Griffith. Screenplay by Anthony Paul Kelly, Griffith, based on the play by Lottie Blair Parker. With Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess, Lowell Sherman, Burr McIntosh, Kate Bruce, Creighton Hale. World premiere of the new, digitized edition of MoMA’s definitive 1979 photochemical restoration. 145 min.

The famous actress Lillian Gish stranded on a piece of ice on the ice-clogged Connecticut River heading for a waterfall. That is how D. W. Griffith chose to shoot the climax of his wildly successful moving picture, Way Down East (1920). Its success was also due in no small part to its live accompanying half-original, half-compiled orchestral score by American composers Louis Silvers and William Frederick Peters, whose new Music of the United States of America (MUSA) edition is premiering live with a new digital print at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) on July 29, 2026. Adapted from Lottie…