Lillian Gish, the first lady on the screen
This is a pair of breathtaking and magical eyes, quiet and deep, black holes generally attract all eyes and make people forget the existence of faces. And that was an equally perfect face, round, soft, and elegant, exuding inhuman purity of brilliance.
And under this rare beauty is a rare creative mind.
Lillian Gish's birthday has always been set as October 14, 1896. After her death, her agent revealed that she was actually born in 1893, almost the same age as the movie. No one has ever suspected that she underreported by 3 years, she always looks younger than her actual age. Gish was born in a broken family in Ohio. Gish dropped out of school to tour with the troupe when he was a teenager to supplement his family. In 1912, the sisters were recommended to Griffith together. In Griffith's view, Gish is like a character from Dickens' novels. Such a pure and fragile classical beauty is the ideal actor.
Gish is not only a dedicated actor, but also a talented actor. He is the earliest and most perfect practitioner of Griffith's claim that film performance must be implicit and natural. He has become a naturalistic performance genre. Pioneer. The performances of the actors who played with Gish seem to be somewhat artificial, only Gish's performance is impeccable. For a long time, her films have been used by people who are interested in film acting, especially for those actors who have switched careers from theatrical acting. However, when necessary, Gish can also express his feelings to his heart's content. In "Battered Flowers," Lucy hid in the closet after being snatched home by her father. Her father smashed the door of the closet with an axe and dragged her out and killed her. During the rehearsal of this scene, Gish only performed restrainedly, and Griffith was already satisfied. Unexpectedly, Gish saved all her energy for the official shooting. When she was trapped in the closet, and when the axe was chopped down, she let herself play to her fullest, expressing the despair and fear of the desperate Lucy to the fullest. Reeves was dumbfounded. This shot has also become the most distressing scene in the movie.
After filming " Orphans of the Storm , " Gish left Griffith and went to another film company. Without Gish, Griffith could no longer produce outstanding works, but Gish’s acting career has reached the peak, most importantly, including the 1926 adaptation of Puccini’s opera Bohemia "Asian Girl" and "Wind" filmed in 1928. When filming "Bohemian Girl", Gish put her life in danger again, but this time she asked for it: when the filming of her starring squint death day approached, she started Hunger hunger made me weak; then, water was absent and dehydrated; I felt that it was not enough, so I dried my saliva with cotton and made myself look as seriously ill as a squint. When the scene where she died, her breathing stopped. The director suspected that she was really dead, not only because her body was dying, but also that her soul must have gone with the character. Gish herself thinks that filming "The Wind" is her most difficult experience. The wind was stirred by the propellers of the airplane, and the dust was full, and the temperature in the wind was as high as 50 degrees Celsius, and Gish took pictures one after another in this wind, and it was her most outstanding performance.
Gish became a film activist in his later years, and vigorously promoted and sponsored the study of silent films. In Griffith's later years, Hollywood had completely forgotten the patriarch, but Kish did not forget to take care of the sickly Griffith until his death. After Griffith's death, under Gish's lobbying, the US government issued a stamp commemorating Griffith. On February 27, 1993, Gish died in his sleep at the age of 99. The history of film creation lost the last witness. In his will, Gish left a large sum of money to the American Film Institute to protect Griffith's films.
Gish is unmarried for life. Her life can be summed up in her autobiographical dedication: "To my mother, she gave me love; To my sister, she taught me to laugh; To my father, he gave me no A sense of security; dedicated to Griffith, he taught me that work is more fun than play."