Lillian Gish Mourns the Loss of Silent Film

Many of my fellow silent film fans may be familiar with a famous quote from Mary Pickford, "It would have been more logical if silent pictures had grown out of the talkie instead of the other way around." America's sweetheart was not the only silent film actress to echo such sentiments. Lillian Gish shared very similar statements when interviewed by Martian Chisholm for Film and TV Technician magazine (issue dated October, 1957). Below is the article that came as a result of this interview.

"'With the introduction of speech into motion pictures, we lost the key to people's understanding of each other'

"That though-provoking statement is the considered view of Lillian Gish, veteran stage screen and television actress, who has just completed work at Shepperton on Anthony Asquith's Orders to Kill.


"This does not mean that she is not happy in a speaking role. Fra from it 'I have never had ten happier days anywhere in the world' She told me. 'than working with Anthony Asquith on this picture. The whole time there was a sense of working with a group of artists and technicians who each and all , were dedicated to just one thing, getting it right.

"There was one sequence in which I was troubled with doubts. I felt I had not been able to convey what was in the director's mind, and, for the first time in my life I felt that I could not face seeing my rushes.'

"There is nothing intense in Lillian Gish's manner when she says a thing like that. She is quiet, relaxed and speaks thoughtfully and very modestly about a medium to which she is utterly devoted. There is not even the slightest doubt about that. Take this question of speech on the screen for instance.

"'What we see' she said 'is so much more important than what we hear. It makes so much a greater impact on us. We who work in motion pictures should never for one moment forget that the quickest way to the brain is through the eye.'

"Does this mean that even today with all the available richness of new sound techniques, there is a scope for  revival of silent films?

"I put that question to Miss Gish. 'I think' she replied 'that we what should aim at is not, perhaps silent films, but films in which instead of dialogue we marry music to vision. And we I say 'music' I certainty do not exude the music of words. The words for Shakespeare, for instance are music in themselves, and has a finer film ever been made than Henry the Fifth?

"'You may smile at what I am going to say, but I'd like to tell you this. In the old silent days we felt we were working on a medium that the Bible had predicted, a medium which had the possibility of growing into a universal language which could make all men brothers. Yes we really felt that this medium was so much greater, so much more important, than any of us. We worked with that idea constantly in our minds. The medium had the power and we felt our responsibility in its use deeply.'
   
"Lillian Gish thought for a minute then she added: 'I think that too many men have lost that sense of responsibility to the medium. We had better get back to it if we don't like the state of the world today'"

-Michael J. Ruhland