Excerpt from: "Private House Art" 2018.9
Lilian Gish, the first lady on the screen. Her birthday has always been set as October 14, 1896. On February 27, 1993, Gish died in his sleep at the age of ninety-nine. The history of film creation lost the last witness.
Lilian Gish was born in Springfield, USA. Her father was a family-conscious alcoholic and her mother was a stage actor. Takes her and her sister Dorothy Gish away, acting as a living. Lilian Gish has a wealth of experience on stage since she was a child.
In 1912, Lillian Gish met David Griffith and was appreciated by him as the most important actor under his banner. At that time, most of the actors came from theaters, and their acting skills were exaggerated. In order to prevent such crude performances, Griffith arranged for a group of actors to rehearse continuously and train more solid acting performances.
Following Griffith, Lilian Gish photographed masterpieces including "The Birth of a Nation", "Party Facing Differences", "Salvation of the Country", "Wind" and so on. At the same time, she has also filmed many films adapted from literary works, such as Giacomo Puccini's operas "Life in Bohemia" and "The Scarlet Letter."
Most of the roles played by Gish are tragic, often exposed to dangerous environments, and she is reluctant to use a substitute, and her life is often in danger. When filming "To the East", she was lying on the ice floes in a blizzard and following the rapids, which was completely on-site shooting. After filming this famous scene, she was almost frozen to death, and Griffith bought her life insurance for this. When filming "Remnant Tears", because the actor who played Lucy's father had to be a director during the day, he could only film at night. It was winter, and according to the plot, she could only wear thin clothes. As a result, she had to suffer from the cold again. Upon seeing this, her sister threatened Griffith and said: "If my sister freezes to death, I will kill you!" Fortunately, the scene was only filmed for eighteen days. Gish survived, and Griffith also Taken a life.
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 now seem to be somewhat artificial, only Gish's performance is impeccable. Her films have been used for a long time 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 "Remnant Tears", Lucy was snatched home by her father and hid in the closet. Her father smashed the door of the closet with an axe and dragged her out and killed her. When rehearsing 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.
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