It was all done by the actors. Lillian Gish said she was terrified, and her co-star actually had to jump repeatedly from one floating ice chunk to another to get to her; then he picked her up and carried her to safety. Simply incredible.
And the temperature was so cold that they had to light a fire under the camera to keep it warm enough to operate. The cast and crew certainly earned their pay in that scene.
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Reply by genplant29
on November 10, 2019 at 1:15 AM
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.
Reply by martymonstertmdb
on November 10, 2019 at 1:53 PM
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.
Reply by Zürich Gnome
on November 15, 2019 at 9:24 PM
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.
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.
Reply by WantinShoulder
on November 15, 2019 at 10:15 PM
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.
Reply by genplant29
on November 15, 2019 at 10:42 PM
Regarding Noah's Ark (1928), from Wikipedia:
That movies' epic flooding portion is spectacular. (The movie otherwise? Not so great.)
Reply by WantinShoulder
on November 15, 2019 at 10:58 PM
Wow. That is really phenomenal.
Reply by genplant29
on November 15, 2019 at 11:47 PM
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.
Reply by martymonstertmdb
on November 16, 2019 at 9:28 AM
The picture is amazing. Thanks for posting.
Reply by WantinShoulder
on November 16, 2019 at 10:11 PM
Yes. That picture is amazing.