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Reel 04 I HAVE said that there are several ways in which the story of a celebrated woman's life may be written. One is to publish it in the form of an autobiography, attributing to her the actual writing of the narrative. There are two objections to this: one, that often the writing is done by an obscure hack journalist; also, if the subject writes her own story she is so handcuffed by modesty, assuming she really is great, that she finds it difficult to treat of her own -greatness. I have yet to interview a person who seems to dislike the pronouns I and my and me and mine as much as Lillian Gish does. If I asked how she achieved some of her most famous screen portrayals, she hastened to praise her director. If I mentioned the fact that several actresses have played Mimi in La Boheme, she promptly explained the critics' and public's preference for her interpretation by saying something about the more modern developments of mechanics, about more recent standards in the method of telling the gesture story.

When I recalled to her the unprecedented fact that Berlin and Parie reviewers had, for the first time, done unstilted homage to an American actress after they saw her Romola and The White Sister; and the further amazing fact that Vladimir Dantchenko, founder of the Moscow Art Theater, and accepted universally as the greatest authority on acting, had beheld in her La Boheme and The White Sister the only screen interpretations he had ever seen fit to laud--indeed, he became quite rhapsodical in his confidence that American pictures had produced an artiste of the first magnitude and that at last American films showed a promise of quickly outdistancing the world--when I reminded Lillian Gish of these solitary encomiums in the great Dantchenko's experience with- the movies he detests, she merely murmured:

"How generous, how tolerant, the Russian is an all the critics ! "

Well, there are several ways to penetrate genuine modesty: I found sufficiently serviceable in this case an abstract discussion of acting before the camera. Genuine greatness must infuse comment with its personality.

" Where are the great stories of the screen coming from?" I inquired. " You say that the famous writers deal in the very things you cannot use--words. Until the authors learn to think in terms of suggestion and unexplained action, it seems to me the pictures will mark time, as far as-great acting goes."

"No," she demurred. "I wonder if the solution is not to be found in the galleries of an art museum? Maybe the great stories are coming from great painters stand: before Tintoretto's Miracle of the Slave, before Michelangeloís and Correggio's masterpieces, before-the wondrous Mona Lisa--and imagine them in motion! That is all there is to moving pictures.

"Think of a lovely painting moving; think of the story of Mona Lisa painted on a mile-long canvas by Leonardo da Vinci! "Then translate that story- of her girlhood, the experiences that taught her that enigmatic smile, the story ok-her maturity, of her death--transmute that into acting before the camera, and you have the perfect picture. Do you think you would need subtitles to explain the life of the glorious Mona? " If a genius-like - Leonardo da-Vinci needed only two dimensions to achieve his-miracles and his immortality, why should we screen actresses who can move and think require more? To convey truth and beauty--the only things worth while in our profession or in all life, for that matter--we have been handicapped by the many things I have explained to you. "But we are on the way to finer things, and we shall arrive. Great actresses will follow our poor little efforts, bringing visions to the silver sheet which now we cannot even imagine: I think there is a curious parallel between the motion-picture industry and the automobile story of Henry Ford, and between our business and the real-estate story of Los Angeles;

"Mr. Ford began by making a car that the poor people could afford. By teaching them to ride in little machines, he made them long to ride in better ones..

" The whole industry owes much world's bosom--ambition, thrift, desire to improve one's estate, to see the country, to broaden one's horizon, to breathe fresh air, to build finer and longer roadways.

" More than railroads or steamships, Mr. Ford reduced-the girth of the globe.

" And when he had put his little car in the hands of the people, he tried to take the rattle out of it, to equip it with bigger tires, to improve its appearance-to add a bit of beauty to its utilitarianism.

Then he -raised wages, helped his employees to build homes, gave them the chance to own a little plot of ground, established a score of schemes whereby they might better their condition.

"Then to his inner yearning to make a great gesture in the realm of the idealistic and the beautiful came opportunity; and, whether you agree or disagree with his effort, you cannot deny that there was something brave and lovely and altogether Pne in his Peace Ship, his longing to stop the dreadful slaughter in Europe.

IT makes no difference that he 'may have been misguided, visionary, a mere theorist, out of touch with a cold and practical and very cruel world--he did his best in the only light by which it was given him to see.

" Then he wanted to make more beautiful and more expensive automobiles, so that those who could afford them-might own lovely chariots to ride in, and to prove that a railroad could be run profitably and still reduce freight rates and expedite shipments and bring friendlier relations between a corporation and the public. "That Mr. Ford has groped and fumbled and spoken foolish words about things of which he knows nothing, does not lessen the fact that the things he has brought to American life, to America's history, have been courageous and beautiful things. "And that this world has approved his efforts is shown by the fact that it has made him the richest man that history has known, without one thought of envy to taint its approval of all he has done and all he has tried to do. "Thus with the pictures: from a poor, humble, tawdry, cheap amusement they have grown to their present estate, unsatisfactory and inadequate as this may be. "From trick pictures and aimless ideas, the films have come to their colossal standing among the industries of the world; and a new goal is in sight--the portrayal of beauty and truth in the palaces erected all around the globe to house' the pictures we are making and hoping to make.

" Mr. Ford reached his eminence in a quarter of a century, and the movies have spanned the same brief period. Both have been laughed at, denounced, criticized adversely, and scorned--but the world has not withheld its material rewards from either, and the world understands clearly that both are trying to bring into human life something new and beautiful.

" We who came out here a decade and a half ago remember dazedly what real estate was when we stepped off the train.

"A sleepy, sprawling, unambitious, overgrown village, Los Angeles suddenly awakened and began to tell its story to the world--a story of beauty and of truth: beauty of climate, of scenery, of industrial and shipping potentialities, of agriculture, of health, of the sunshine that enabled the motion-picture producers to work here almost every day in the year.

"And as southern California will some day be acknowledged the paradise of earth, so will the motion- picture emerge from its present lagging, uncertain ' stage to become the most important thing in the life of the world."

"Do you think, ìI asked, "that the foreign films will creep in ahead of ours to reach that artistic development and achievement you regard as essential to the making of truly great pictures?

The foreigner, we are told, gives to his art more of his time and a greater energy -- more of his soul-than the hurrying, money hungry Yankee producer and actor

Miss Gish seemed to stir with an access of that patriotism whose finish she had forecast in our earlier conversations!

I DONT think any foreigner is more sincere in his wish to make fine pictures than we are," she declared. "If anything, we have a decided advantage in our race for perfection.. The whole world had to start even when it came to camera acting, because we all began at the same moment and because nobody had any past, any legend, any criteria, to guide him.

"But we have more money with which to experiment, with which to build studios and laboratories, with which to seek truth and beauty. And our producers are commencing to envision the possibilities of the new art. "There is in this country no school for cinema acting such as the speaking stage enjoys. The indispensable thing, technique, must be acquired slowly, tediously, at a great cost of time and money and heartaches.

" The Barrymores, the Barretts, the Kendals, the Drews, ëthe Du Mauriers, and the other families whose fine audible acting is a matter of generations, can absorb this I technique without much trouble. Their background and their atmosphere make for great acting.

"WE of the silent stage have no such advantage. What little technique I possess I got through ' hard work and observation. I used to place a full-length mirror beside ' the tripod and, as I acted, watch myself in the glass. There I learned the dangers of overemphasis, of prolonging the action unduly, of self-consciousness, of self-satisfaction.

"I learned in time that, just as a stenographer must strike the ' space-bar after each word, or he will simply have a long line of I jumbled letters, so must there be a tiny fraction of time after each movement in camera acting.

"Each movement must have a definite, purposeful beginning, continuance, and end. If this is overlooked or neglected, you will have only a long jumbled line of emotions. "But if the foreigner has any advantage over us, it is in the fact that, while we have no schedules to teach pantomimic art, the Swedish and German aspirants have some very one ones. This will bring them to the screen prepared more effectively in a shorter time than Americans. "I think, though, that this early advantage will be offset a bit by the possible danger that those foreign teachers will tend to standardize emotions a little too closely. Much can be taught, undoubtedly; but we don't know anything definitely, because the whole thing is too new and too big to admit of set rules. "The foreigners, nevertheless,' are bringing immensely valuable things to the art. I think it tremendously interesting and important for Americans to know what they are doing abroad; and on my ' trips over there I have studied the I different programs of hopes and accomplishments as closely as I am ' capable of doing.

" Nowhere have the pictures advanced so rapidly, so splendidly, and from such discouraging beginnings as in Germany. Torn to I pieces by the war and its aftermath, that country has done almost ' as much with the films in eight years as the rest of the world has in thirty. I "The German school of acting stresses literality, fidelity, realism. ' The mechanics is excellent--lenses, lighting, time-saving equipment advancing there more swiftly today than anywhere else in the world.

"The directors are unexcelled in the handling of actors. They are not so good in directing the actresses, omitting from their vision the delicacy, the idealism, the reverence, the glorification with which Americans regard their women.

"The German producer will go to any length to permit the camera to be the eyes and the voice that tell the story. The Last Laugh, the world's masterpiece of male acting and directing, is proof of this. ACCUSE is a film characteristic of the French school. Impulsive bits of acting; charming, sparkling wit; jealous regard for femininity and all its graces-these are inseparable from the Latin screen sense.

"Naughtiness in an exquisite way, actually captivating--this is typically French. We can probably quaff copious drafts from that inexhaustible well of Gallic grace.

"The Scandinavian is bringing to the screen the epochal things that Ibsen brought to spoken and written drama. It is not yet so revolutionary or startling or so sudden; but it is coming slowly, glacially, irresistibly, gloriously.

"The actor there is a powerful delineator of the stern, implacable principle of righteousness without which society would collapse. ëThis is illustrated by The Scarlet Letter, directed by Victor Seastrom, a brilliant Swedish actor who has brought fine things to the screen.

" When we sought for a man to play the part of the Reverend Dim mesdale, the Puritan preacher who sinned with Hester Prinne, we decided that America had grown so far away from the early New England tradition of piety and orthodox gravity and had become so addicted to lightness, to 'the jazz age, to the volatile temperament which is the other extreme from the Pilgrim viewpoint, that no American we knew could properly interpret the atern Puritan pastor.

" We went to Sweden for the man we needed -Lars Hansen, the finest King Lear in that country. In him we found the uncompromising realism, the adherence to a rigid standard that we sought. And this is what Scandinavian films are contributing to the world of pictures. "The Italian school is rich in composition and lighting effects and matchless background. The land that produced Raphael, Dante, Leonardo da Vinci, Petrarch, Michelangelo--the land that has dominated the world's mental measures for nearly twenty centuries will give much to pictures that is sheer artistry and solid beauty. " Russia is feeling her way to the etching on the screen of the mysticism, the weird realism, the occult mingling of Caucasian and Monsollan her mighty literature and music for generations. Potemkin is Russia's greatest film, so far; and in it lies tremendous promise of what those people will do. " It is a study in amazing action. A war-ship plays the leading role; there is not one motionless scene in the picture; and there in one moment of poignant beauty--when the little boats come out to help the great vessel in her death throes! " The Japanese will err, I think, if they try to mimic the Occident in their pictures.

" Theirs is so ancient a culture, so gorgeous a picturesqueness, so strange a philosophy, with such entrancing costumes and scenery, that merely to tell the Japanese story would-be glory enough for the industry there.

"The British are an extraordinary people! They won't let their own countrymen use the lovely country and historic streets and magnificent forests and statues and streams as background for their own pictures.

" The press constantly complains that our films are Americanizing the world; yet English officialdom is stubborn in its opposition to the development of English pictures.

" For example, you cannot set up a camera in Hyde Park; and you may fancy the consternation in the Admiralty if a director should ask the loan of the British navy for a sea picture!

'' My sister Dorothy had to intercede in person with the House of Lords for permission to take a few scenes in Hide Park--and the picture was Tip Toes, a British National Film, in which Will Rogers played with her.

" The newspapers got excited and the question was gravely debated for a week. The idea seemed to be that, since no moving picture was taken of the knights around King Arthur's celebrated table, why, manifestly, none could be taken of the lions in Trafalgar Square!

"In this country we are given every assistance. Naturally, we'll Americanize the world if such freedom helps us to tell the American story to the foreign peoples.

" Yet England has so much to offer to pictures -- beauty of countryside, epochal events, science, literature, tradition. I imagine that conditions will change over there; and then British genius will make of British films the masterpieces Britons always produce in every line of human endeavor."

'IT occurred to me at this point that an actress who plays so important a role in the direction and production of her own pictures as Lillian Gish does--a phase of her activities presently to be expanded --must have concise and coherent ideas on what are likely to be the next steps in the mechanical development of her profession "What do you think is coming' in the way of color photography and speaking pictures ? " I inquired.

" I'm not very enthusiastic about the latter," she said. " I can't see just what is to be gained by having the two-dimensioned figures on the screen talk aloud about what they are doing. It would be simply an endless series of audible subtitles crowded in to distract the attention from the acting.

" Our future, I think, lies in the perfecting of the unspoken drama, beautiful and truthful acting that will need no written or spoken word to explain it.

"As to natural color photography I am intensely enthusiastic --provided it shows natural colors and not a blotch. Of course, I have no idea how this is to be achieved.

"Hand coloring is impracticable because of delay and expense. The angle from which certain color hunters now are working is not the correct one. They' work from greens and reds and, of course, the present blacks and whites and composite grays.

"The film they employ is sensitive only to greens and reds, and all the other primary colors and blendings 'thereof are false. They are streaked and garish 'and never smooth. "The panchromatic film manufactured by the people in Rochester, New York, is the nearest approach to what we want, and may be the first stride toward the goal. With this it is possible, in a measure, to show, in subdued tones, the lighter and more delicate shadings. The future, I think, lies in the study and perfecting of this idea--although, naturally, some now unknown scientist may suddenly stumble on the precious secret.

" We used much of the panchromatic film in the making of Romola in Italy. But we had a great deal of trouble with it.

" It was new to our cameramen and our developers; it was unbelievably sensitive and delicate and difficult to handle; and our expenses mounted frightfully when the costly celluloid was spoiled because of our unfamiliarity with it.

"It would be interesting if a woman made the great discovery and it is not impossible that one will. The world may have wondered what has become of one of its favorite actresses, one of the greatest actresses that ever lived -Maude Adams.

" I am told that she is devoting her fortune and her time to the study of color in motion. pictures in a laboratory at Schenectady, New York. She has been experimenting there for years.

"But, until color is visually beyond reproach and mechanically practical, I think we have enough to occupy our best minds in improving the field of black and white..

" Sculpture, the carving of black and-white marbles, came long before painting; and if we can reach in moving blacks and whites the heights attained by the chiselers of stone, we can then justifiably worry about color.

"Etchings have breath-stealing beauty, and until we achieve in our darks and lights the effects portrayed by Whistler, we needn't fret because we cannot yet emulate the wizardry of color wrought by Titian, Rembrandt, and Murillo."

"This brings us back to technique," I said--"the technique that will lift mere black and white to genuine artistry. Can you give me a suggestion as to the acquirement of technique for the benefit of aspirants to fame in the films? "

" I have said that one cannot explain what technique is, nor how to get it," she replied. " I can give you a brief description of some of the steps I have taken to develop what little technique I have learned through the years.

"When it became necessary for me to depict Mimi dying of tuberculosis in the final scenes of La Bohème, I decided to find out just how the victims of this disease die, by watching them expire. I spent all my spare time for weeks in the hospitals. The authorities gave me every facility for observation in the Los Angeles County Hospital.

" When it came time to make the scenes, I had several specialists present on the set at all times; and they often conferred with King Vidor, the director, and me while the picture was in the making, stopping the camera and helping me to rehearse the tiny bits of business-the invisible but omnipresent technique essential to a correct portrayal of a young girl dying of phthisis

"Since the picture was released, I have received letters from physicians all over the country, complimenting me on the fidelity of this portrayal.

"IN trying to represent the hideous terror felt by Lucy, in Broken Blossome. when her father was bursting in the closet door to beat her to death--a terror that approximated a paroxysm of insanity -I was baffled because the experience was so foreign to anything Mr. Griffith and I had any personal knowledge of. " So I resolved to haunt insane asylums until I could catch in the eyes and on the faces there the expressions I wanted. This was very horrible.

" One incident is still vivid. The superintendent and I were talking to a beautiful young girl. She spoke rationally about many things and bitterly about being kept in the asylum long after she had been cured.

"Then the superintendent said to her in a gentle voice, ëYes, yes, Mary; I know you are completely recovered. But will you please tell me why you broke the window in your room this morning and cut your initials on your leg with a splinter of glass?' She looked at him impatiently as she answered, 'Why, doctor, that was so entirely normal that I'm 'surprised you even ask! I wanted to write my initials somewhere and I had no pencil." Thus , through the years and from every source, one picks up and absorbs this thing I call technique. The strata are tiny and slowly acquired, and sometimes the accumulation seems to be getting nowhere.

"But it must be learned--and once learned it must be immediately forgotten, just as the technique of the perfect golf swing must not be thought of while taking one's stance and addressing the ball."

Last modified on: Thursday, October 30, 1997.