Lillian Gish’s Success In “The Enemy”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 364, 26 May 1928, Page 25

Lillian Gish’s Success In “The Enemy”

Her Plaintive Beauty NOTABLE SCREEN CAREER

Lillian Gish appears to have made a pronounced success in America in “The Enemy,” the screen version of Channing Pollack’s play.

“The plaintive beauty of her face and the delicacy of her method suit ] well this agonized young wife and mother, who is so cruelly bereft by war,” says one reviewer. “One has only to look back on Miss Gish’s career and consider some of the characters she has played to realise how great is her talent, if it be not genius itself.” Grace and Femininity A fragile, lovely thing she is, with fluttering hands that suggest helpless femininity, a face of Madonna beauty and a grace that is God-given. Her list of pictures is a long one, with several flaming beacons along the way, and one that lights up gloriously at the very beginning, the girl in “The Birth of a Nation." Next one remembers her as the delicately lovely child of the Limehouse district in Grillitli’s “Broken Blossoms,” which also had Richard Barthelmess in an unforgettable role. Her Henriette In Griffith's rather abortive attempt to make a massive picture from the old melodrama, “The Two Orphans,” was better than the picture. Another highlight in her career was her heroine in “The White Sister,” perhaps the finest thing she has done. Her acting in a scene with Ronald Coiman, that in the observatory on Mt. Vesuvius as the volcano begins to throw out lava, fire and rocks, wa3 gorgeous in its beauty and poignancy. Romola, ill the George Eliot romance of Florence and Savanarcda, was pictorially lovely, but the role was a trifle heavy for the slim shoulders of the Gish, but as Hester Prynne iu Hawthorne’s immortal “The Scarlet Letter,” she was superlatively beautiful physically and as an actress.

Few Failures Mimi in an attempt to catch the pathos o£ Henri Murger’s “La Vie de Boheme,” which King Vidor directed, was tender and interesting, but not a great characterisation, and the futile heroine in “Annie Laurie” was a total loss. Pauli is a role jnade for the fair Lillian, giving her the opportunity to show her emotional powers at their greatest and most perfect point. Miss Gish’s failures have been few and not fatal, and her successes — the list above is but a fraction of the things she has done —have been many and great.