Impressive, indeed. I suspect that nowadays such a scene would be enacted and filmed in a studio water tank. Surrounding environment, plus various "danger" and freezing temperatures special effects, would be CGI'd in after the fact.

This interesting TCM.com article tells more about the Silent classic's ice floe filming.

It is amazing the risks sometimes taken in older films, but controlling the environment, film trickery and stunt doubles is hardly a new thing. Only a couple of years later they used every trick in the book available to them to film Harold Lloyd's famous clock stunt.

Does real danger really make it better? I mean in a similar scene to Safety Last Christopher Lloyd is probably 2 ft off the ground when he's hanging from the clock tower in Back to the Future, but the scene doesn't suffer for it.

@martymonstertmdb said:

Only a couple of years later they used every trick in the book available to them to film Harold Lloyd's famous clock stunt.

Yes, and the reason they did that two years later is probably because people in the industry complained about how dangerous the filming of Way Down East had been. The industry was forced to get its act together fast, to avoid all sorts of insurance/lawsuit issues.

Does real danger really make it better? I mean in a similar scene to Safety Last Christopher Lloyd is probably 2 ft off the ground when he's hanging from the clock tower in Back to the Future, but the scene doesn't suffer for it.

Nobody is arguing whether it makes it better or not (whatever you mean by "better"). It's a statement about how dangerous early filming was, irrespective of the effect on the audience. But I would also argue, as many have recently indicated, that audiences are starting to get a bit jaded, knowing that so much is now done by CGI, making it less impressive. Some have bemoaned the fact that things are now often assumed to be done by CGI, even when they actually aren't.

Incredible. Gish was said to have her hair frozen and adhered onto an ice slab gushing down river. No wonder why she was terrified.

Lloyd and Keaton also did perform dangerous stunts. Keaton and the waterfall scene where he has to rescue the beautiful damsel floating over the top.

Silent version of Uncle Tom's Cabin also has cast members jumping across gushing river from one ice slab to the next.

Silent version of Noah's Ark has some extras but real humans succumbing to dangerous gushing flood waters.

Regarding Noah's Ark (1928), from Wikipedia:

It is claimed that during the filming of the climactic flood scene, the great volume of water used was so overwhelming (600,000 US gallons [2,300 m3]) that three extras drowned, one was so badly injured that his leg needed to be amputated, and a number suffered broken limbs and other serious injuries, which led to implementation of stunt safety regulations the following year....Thirty-five ambulances attended the wounded.

That movies' epic flooding portion is spectacular. (The movie otherwise? Not so great.)

Wow. That is really phenomenal.

There's so much about the Silent era, particularly the 1920s decade thereof, that is absolutely remarkable the truly daring and dangerous stunts people were performing (for example the dazzling chariots race - that a real-life terrible smash-up occurred during - in 1925's Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, and the intense conflagration - that at least three extras were badly burned in - in 1929's The Godless Girl), and the techniques that were being thought up for how to be able to successfully film them. When Way Down East was released in 1920, the Gish ice floe scenes (click on picture to enlarge) were unlike anything that had been seen on screen before.

The picture is amazing. Thanks for posting.

Yes. That picture is amazing.