Word: gish
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...film's every turn and nuance is heightened, given immediate meaning for the character involved, as much by its understated acting as by its simple shooting style. Carol Dempster has come far from the frolics she and Lillian Gish gave Griffith's films of the earlier twenties. And Adolphe Menjou, as Satan, is the model of restraint. For him a grimace or devilish leer would be an unspeakable faux pas. But Griffith, far from leaving him a polished gentleman without depth of character, makes his slightest gestures personally significant. Menjou is eating dinner with Ricardo Cortez in the grandest...
...LEARNING that The Scarlet Letter, made in 1926 stars Lillian Gish. one begins wondering why it wasn't a project of D.W. Griffith's. The resulting film certainly would have differed radically from the one Victor Seastrom did direct...
...remarkable change of tone and import from Hawthorne's to Seastrom's Scarlet Letter can be traced in the distance between Seastrom's and Griffith's drama. One notices it first in Gish's acting. Her hands, which in Griffith persistently fluttered toward face and breast, are held in more tightly or used actually to grasp people. Seastrom gives their pure emotional energy a real application: Gish's gestures, rather than only expressing her spirit. become actions with physical and specific ends...
...sequence Gish. as Hester Prynne, pursues Lars Hansen (Arthur Dimmesdale) to and fro in an attempt to make him talk to her. Griffith would have depicted his decision by cutting to their two faces: Seastrom cuts to their feet walking along the country road. The physical aspect of the decision, the characters' actions in their real setting, takes over from Griffith's spiritual. abstract tendency. Yet Seastrom's acting style remains melodramatic. If anything Lars Hansen is cruder than Griffith's heroes: his gestures are slower and broader. Where Griffith would concentrate on the face. Seastrom gives us the whole...
...Lillian Gish: The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me, Gish and Pinchot...