It's no exaggeration to say that Lillian Gish was
the first true actor of the cinema. In her historic collaborations
with director D.W. Griffith, she virtually defined the craft of
acting for the camera, inventing an entirely new--and reverently
artistic--approach to film performance liberated from the grand
gestures of live theater at the turn of the 20th century. With
her sister Dorothy, Lillian
Gish developed a vocabulary of acting that ranged from heartbreaking
subtlety to outlandish torment, tender comedy, visual wit, and
the quiet revelations of a furtive glance. Physically agile and
as serious about film as Griffith, she elevated the new medium
to the level of art, and continued to do so until she costarred,
at the age of 90, with Bette Davis in 1987's The Whales of August. Lillian
Gish films include
Broken Blossoms
Way Down East
Orphans of the Storm
The Wind
Duel in the Sun
The Night of the Hunter
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