The Painted Lady

The Painted Lady (1912) - Well, this is a bizarre and sadistic little fable - and I call it a "fable" because there seems to be some underlying, yet incomprehensible, moral about the evils of wearing makeup hidden in the subtext. I could quite be wrong here, however, and the pathos of the heroine’s descent into madness could quite be associated with her sense of low self esteem, and makeup is simply a poetic metaphor for a projection of herself onto a different plane of perception.

If I sound confused, it’s because I am. At the very bottom of The Painted Lady is a meaning that seems quite elusive to me. Perhaps I am trying to over-read the film. Perhaps it should best be taken for what it apparently is - a mean little melodrama that gives a talented young film actress plenty of space to act with her face.

This is certainly an actor’s vehicle. Blanche Sweet, who we saw kidnapped and placed in danger of a gang rape in The Lesser Evil, suffers a more severe, inward, psychological damage in this film. Sweet, all of sixteen years old here, looks more mature than she is putting on - this is definitely one of the early screen’s most talented and assured actresses. (Sweet would later go on to play the title role in Griffith’s first "feature" film, Judith of Bethulia [1914], which in very unfortunately not currently available on DVD.)

Sweet portrays the unnamed "Older Sister" in a household of four. Her "Younger Sister," portrayed with aplomb by the delightfully coquettish Madge Kirby, powders and paints her face to perfection in order to get the fellows to dote on her. She tries to get big sister to loosen up and paint up herself. But sweet Blanche is having no part of it. The result? Little sis gets all the attention at the church social while poor, plain Blanche gets the cold shoulder.

This is a puzzling situation, simply because we do not know Blanche’s reasoning here. Yes, her father (Charles Hill Mailes) is a stiff old gruff with a beard, but parental repression does not seem to faze Little Sister. Just what is making Blanche such a wallflower? Is it guilt from sexual repression - or perhaps just shyness? Blanche is certainly pretty enough, but she keeps her hair knotted up and her face as plainly blank as it can be.

What is going on underneath all this, we’d like to know? The film really doesn’t give evidence of exactly what Blanche’s dilemma is - all we do is see her react. And it is clear that, for whatever reason, this young lady is a fragile package already - and we are all the more ready to accept her subsequent crumbling.

Getting on with the plot, two "plotters" are sizing up the rich old man’s house. One of them, Joseph Graybill, looking affable in his straw hat and mustache, is greeted by the kindly minister, and is introduced around, arriving eventually with Blanche, who has gone off to suffer in self pity. The stranger ingratiates himself with Blanche, who is stunned and flattered by this newcomer’s interest in and apparent attraction to her.

We can see the transformation occurring on Blanche’s face, and her beauty is drawn out as she is coaxed from her shell by this handsome flatterer. Later, she escapes out her window for a secret rendezvous with the young fellow, where he flatters her some more.

However, it is all a subterfuge. All the stranger really wants is information about her father’s "business," which Blanche eventually provides. Here, the narrative breaks down - what information on earth does this man want from Blanche. He’s a burglar - is she going to give him the safe combination? Even if she knew it, wouldn’t such a question make her a tad suspicious?
At any rate, this detail proves unimportant to the psychological drama.

The new "boyfriend" dons a heavy coat, hat and masks his face and sneaks into the house. Blanche, left alone, realizes that there is an intruder and enters to confront him with a gun (!!!) (Where did this silly girl get a gun? Surely Griffith was not making a gun-control argument, but it certainly works as one here.) The burglar overpowers her, however, and in a struggle, the gun discharges, killing the intruder dead.

It is when Blanche has realized what has happened that she begins her terrifying descent into madness, beginning with a very effective display of hysterics. One can easily imagine most anyone reacting with emotional horror in such a situation, though. It is only when she has regained her control enough to look at the man’s face - and see that it is her new love that she has inadvertently killed, that she really begins to lose it. There are no histrionics here - she simply goes blank.

Father and Sister arrive home and discover the circumstances. Father takes Blanche into the hall to recover, but she has slipped into a kind of unbelieving catatonia. Sweet’s underplaying of the character here is very effective - and disturbing.

What is much more disturbing, however, is Blanche’s behavior later, after some time has passed. Obviously, still remaining in a mental fog, Blanche rises and surreptitiously exits the house to return to the little arbor where she had met with her "boyfriend" before. Here, she enters, relaxed and lovely as can be, and chats lovingly with the thin air, believing him still to be there. This has to be one of the most chillingly bizarre scenes ever shot in cinema up to this point - and it still holds its power today, nearly a century later.

The idea for the shot is spooky enough - it is Sweet’s magnificent portrayal of complete delusion that sells the scene, however. Sweet is so naturally charming and flirtatious in her utter madness that it is a bit overwhelming to watch. Once again, it is by underplaying the strange part that makes the performance so powerful, and we must assume that Griffith had a great deal to do with that, as that is one of his great trademarks.

The creepiness compounds as Blanche’s mother (Kate Bruce), noticing her missing, shows up to find her daughter in this condition. Sweet does not blink, but simply introduces her mother to her invisible beau. Mother plays along and greets the invisible gentleman.

I believe that if the film simply faded out and ended here, we would have a strange and satisfying conclusion to the film. Yet there is another scene to come.

Later, back at home, Blanche picks up the powder puff belonging to her sister, and moving to the mirror, uncertainly powders her face for another meeting with her "boyfriend." Moving back to the arbor, she greets him again. However, for some reason, she pauses to look at herself in a small mirror. When she sees that she is "painted," she is horrified, and collapses, presumably dead, into her arriving father’s arms. The mother soon joins them in this tableau, and it is here that the film ends.

Just what has happened here? Are we to interpret Sweet’s derangement as somehow related to the "false face" of the makeup - and if so, just how? What hidden force persuades her to powder her face - and why does her recognition of it exact such a profound jolt as to apparently kill her?
Lord knows exactly what Griffith had in mind here. Unless I am missing something either terribly obvious or something terribly obtuse, there seems to be a major flaw in the story telling of the film.

Does makeup somehow create Sweet’s downfall? Or are we simply watching the haphazard cues which gradually overwhelm an already vulnerable and overly sensitive girl? Just what is this film attempting to get at anyway?

I am afraid I just cannot quite crack this nut. But the film is definitely worthwhile for Sweet’s extraordinary performance and the psychological subtleties of the drama itself, difficult as they are to decode. But I have to admit that this is a cruel film, and quite difficult to watch. Cruelty to women will be a major theme in cinema, from Griffith on up to our own day. This is as good a place as any to begin to ponder it and its aesthetic/moral implications.

Friends

Friends (1912) - Speaking of the growing phenomenon of star power, this is the first film I have ever seen that features a credit of the cast - at the beginning of the film no less. I think that we must assume that certain actors were becoming recognizable by film audiences at this point. There are indeed four "stars" to this picture - the primary attraction being the return of Mary Pickford after a year’s sojourn with Griffith rival Thomas H. Ince at IMP (Independent Moving Pictures Co. of America). Sharing the credits with the now-20-year-old veteran are Henry B. Walthall, Lionel Barrymore and Harry Carey.

Friends is a very simply shot, straightforward story which seems designed to give the actors room to play, and they all emote quite well on screen. Standing out especially is Walthall (who will go on to portray the Little Colonel in The Birth of a Nation) as a suave western dandy, prefiguring Clark Gable’s Rhett Butler by nearly thirty years.

Griffith opens with a close-up of Pickford, and the following title card tells us that she is Dora, an orphan in a Colorodo mining town. Pickford’s name appears on the card again, implying that Biograph is attempting to both capitalize on her name for drawing power, as well as to help promote her fame.

As the film proper begins, we see Dora alone in her room. A title card introduces Dandy Jack, a gambler, repeating Walthall’s name the same way it announced Pickford. This is an interesting strategy of trying to help the audience identify and remember the actors, as well as the characters. Clearly, the exploitation of players to sell a film is well underway at this point.

Dandy Jack rides up the street on his horse, then enters a saloon, where he is hailed by all the men, lustily drinking away. Pickford exits her room, then begins to descends the stairs that a quick cut will demonstrate that she lives upstairs over the bar. She calls out to Dandy Jack and invites him upstairs.

I was rather shocked on first viewing, as Pickford was seemingly playing a prostitute. But it turns out that Dandy Jack is her boyfriend - but here Griffith atypically leaves their sexual relationship ambiguous and not a little suggestive.

Dora returns to her room, waiting impatiently, while Dandy Jack remains at the bar, seemingly oblivious. In a nice touch, Pickford stomps her foot on the floor to get his attention below, but Dandy Jack just smiles and gestures her off.

I just have to take a moment to note how quickly and economically Griffith has established that Dora lives in a room over the bar. Very simple cuts, as I mentioned before, made this clear to the audience. But in essence, a larger story is being told. We are given no background on the relationship between this pair, but we can easily imagine an entire past for these two characters, as Dora must have met Dandy Jack as he frequented the bar, and that this was how their relationship began, and about which it is still surrounded and defined.

When Dora finally coaxes Dandy Jack to come up, he simply opens her door and walks in - apparently he has quite free license with her. Dandy Jack informs her that he’s leaving town in search of bigger money. She wants to go with him, but Jack informs her in no uncertain terms that she is staying where she is. Dora bursts into tears. The swell-dressed heel manages to look a bit guilty, but still departs quickly. He goes back down the bar, wishes everyone a goodbye, then exits out into the street. Dora watches him ride away weepily from her window above. He exits with a swagger, bidding the town farewell - there is a marvelous little gesture where he swoops one way down the street, then turns back to exit the other way, lending his character more charisma and braggadocio.

A third title card introduces Bob Kyne, a miner, played by Harry Carey. Carey remains in the background behind two other miners, panning his gold. One has to wonder whether this was originally planned (or even shot) as a longer film, as Carey simply appears here, and has nothing at all to do with the consequent action.

The fourth title card announces Grizzley Fallon, a wandering prospector, played by Lionel Barrymore. Fallon approaches Dandy Jack, who has come to give his good byes to the miners. He is all beefy, outdoors good will, and he shakes Jack’s hand with great enthusiasm. They are as fine a pair as you would want to see out in the wild - two characters so different, but with genuine affection for one another. Griffith and his two actors here achieve a wonderfully incongruous portrait of life out in the great West and the unlikely comradeship of such diverse characters.

Carey comes into the scene and holds Jack’s horse, so he is at least given something to do. (Was Harry Carey a known film actor at this time?) Both miners wave heartily as Jack rides away.
We return to the street in front of the hotel/saloon in which Dora lives, and watch Fallon’s arrival. This is an interesting shot throughout the picture, as people come and go (or simply sit) in the foreground, down the road behind, other characters are continually attending to other business of their own. Here, there is a little square dance taking place out in the street, and with this simple device, Griffith manages to demonstrate the existence of an entire community with very few shots.

Fallon enters the bar, presumably looking to get a room. Meanwhile, upstairs, Dora is still pining away for her Dandy Jack. She puts on a shawl and hat and heads downstairs. She comes into the bar flirtatiously. Several of the men offer her their arms to take her on a stroll outside, but Dora coquettishly rebuffs them.

Heading alone out into the street, she is followed by big Grizzly Fallon, standing on the porch looking after her, indeed like a big bear. He follows her up the street until she runs into a male acquaintance who formally introduces Fallon to her. Dora remains stand offish and continually moves away from Fallon, who each time scratches his head with perplexed frustration.

They move back into the bar, and as Dora begins her ascent back up to her room, Barrymore delivers a wonderful John Wayne-type comic motion of removing another man’s hat in her presence. He follows to the stairs, where she finally smiles and shakes his hand in acquaintance. There is no real explanation for her delay - Dora was evidently simply being coy.

Back upstairs, we observe Dora thinking, and Pickford delivers a subtle smile and a shrug suggesting that - who knows? - she might as well consider the big lug. However, a few moments later, she is looking at a photograph of Dandy Jack in a frame. There’s no real contest between the two men, but Jack is gone now, isn’t he?

Meanwhile Fallon approaches her door and knocks deferentially - a great contrast to the smooth entrance of Dandy Jack - and Dora stands, attempting to decide what to do. Her mind goes back and forth while she leaves the big guy dangling outside, but she finally resolves her dilemma, and quickly stashes Jack’s photo away. She smiles and invites the big, smiling galoot in. Dora takes Fallon’s outstretched hand for another hearty shake, and her little hand is tiny in his mighty mitt. Then quite naturally, she puts her other hand on his, then folds herself into his big, loving, waiting arms.

A title card announces "LATER." At first viewing, I thought that this meant about an hour later - or after coitus. But it turns out to be quite a while later - many days or weeks.

Fallon is in the bar again, and he exits into the street. (I have to mention one of the funniest, most inexplicable actions I’ve ever seen in a film here. Down the street, in the background action, a man is pushing another man in what looks like a large wooden wheelbarrow. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, he stops, turns and unceremoniously dumps his passenger out into the middle of the road. No one seems to notice or reacts to this bizarre event, and the main foreground action keeps going.)

Fallon exits, and suddenly Dandy Jack comes riding back into town and enters the bar. Suave as ever, in his tux and top hat, Jack stands at the bar, while the others silently, nervously eye him. Finally, one of them attempts to give him the news.

Whether the information is actually delivered is unclear, but Jack suddenly appears at Dora’s door, knocks lightly, then slowly, cautiously, lets himself in. He smiles to Dora, removes his hat, and begins to perambulate about the room as she stands there, fixed, confused and frightened.

Without looking at him, Dora slides to the door, asking Jack to please leave. He simply smiles and shakes his head. He’s come back home and he wants her again. Dora closes the door simply, as if in acquiescence. Pickford’s eyes and slow body motions do all of the acting, as she turns and slowly edges hungrily back towards Jack. Finally, she throws her body into his arms with such amazing gusto that we realize that she has pined for him all along.

As he caresses her however, Jack’s eye spies something on her desk below them. As Dora continues to weep at his shoulder and kiss at his cheek, Jack reaches down to pick up the picture frame which now hold the photograph of Fallon, rather than himself.

Dora confesses (via title card), "He is the man I was engaged to marry before you came back." Jack smiles in defeat and begins to return the picture frame back. A quick cut shows him striding jauntily back into the bar. He announces, "She slammed the door in my face, so I reckon I lose." This blatant lie is Jack’s way of keeping his dignity intact, and he orders drinks all around.

Suddenly one of the men notices the lipstick on Jack’s cheek, and his lie is given away. Everyone gets a hearty laugh out of smooth Jack.

Suddenly Fallon enters the bar from the street and greets Jack with the same lusty frontier enthusiasm he showed him before. We think to ourselves, well, here comes the crisis point. What is going to happen now?

Fallon pumps Jack’s hand, and Jack offers him a drink. Abruptly, Fallon leans forward into Jack’s face, who replies to him, "I reckon she’ll marry you, Fallon, but we’ll still be friends."
The two men exchange another hearty shake and then head back to the bar.

There is suddenly a quick cut to Dora, up alone in her room, quietly looking at the picture in the frame. She sits uneasily in close up for a few moments, then stares intently into the camera. The film abruptly ends.

This is a nice scenario in which Griffith intelligently allows his audience to draw their own moral conclusions. We know that Dora still loves Jack, and he wishes to return to her. But is she going to go through with her marriage to Fallon anyway?

There are no easy answers here. We don’t know the final decision, but it looks as though Dora and Jack will deny their own feelings, that Dora will marry Fallon, and this love tragedy never had to have occurred. Yet, we cannot help but blame Dandy Jack for his cavalier behavior towards Dora earlier in the film. Is his willful surrendering to the good-natured Fallon a gallant gesture on his part - or does Jack recognize that he doesn’t have the earnest stuff that will make Fallon such a good husband for Dora?

Friends is a simple little film that hides enormous human complexities. Griffith is becoming subtler at handling personal relationships, and allowing his actors to express themselves with understated dexterity. The ambiguity of the ending of the film is a nice surprise, and it reveals that this nascent art form is maturing, gradually, into a larger, yet more introspective emotional realm.

An Unseen Enemy

An Unseen Enemy (1912) - The most extraordinary thing about this film is, of course, the screen debut of sisters Lillian and Dorothy Gish, two of the most powerful and exciting screen presences of the cinema’s early years - and particularly with Griffith.

From their first moment onscreen, these girls are different - simply radiant brunettes with indescribably expressive eyes. These young women would prove crucial to Griffith’s expanding development of film acting. Already, here in this first picture - Lillian is about 18, Dorothy 14 - the Gish sisters emanate a fluid, wistful naturalness. They both possess uncommon beauty, but it is in their special form of liveliness, a uniquely evocative, definitely sexual power, but residing in a truly human innocence that makes both of them so compelling to watch.

Lillian Gish would go on to be the greater star, but here in the debut, it is younger sister Dorothy who practically steals the film. Her key scenes involve her sad-faced, frustrated boyfriend (Robert Harron) who is about to depart for college, whom she refuses to kiss. Harron, a veteran extra of many Griffith films, really gets the chance to emote mopingly here, and it is no surprise that he will be regularly featured by Griffith until his untimely accidental death in 1920.

What we have here with An Unseen Enemy, is ultimately another "chase to the rescue" movie, and one that would be wholly undistinguished without the appearance of the Gish sisters. They seem to be the actual reason for the film, and the only thing that turns this ordinary action flick into a memorable cinematic experience.

It is interesting to ponder the dialectic between film production and film acting. In a very formal sense, an actor is nothing more than just another visual element in the mise-en-scene of a film. In practice, however, actors are the focus of the narrative threads that tie these films together for the audience. Film makers would soon discover, if they had not already, that it is the actor that is the essential entry point for the viewer, his chief point of reference. Actors, being human beings, are not content to remain purely visual elements on a screen, like on a painter’s canvas, but will emerge from the composition to demand attention to themselves on their own. They are like a new life emerging from a carefully planned construction, and they can (and do) take on a life all their own.

We have seen many actors in film so far by 1912, and many of them, particularly in Griffith’s work, have been excellent. The best (Mary Pickford, John Barrymore) bring a unique presence to their characters without overwhelming the sense of balance in the structure of the film itself. Anyone who has watched a good deal of silent films will be overly familiar with histrionic actors who draw attention to themselves, destroying both formal cinematic balance as well as narrative-driven verisimilitude. Griffith has always been an actor’s director, able to achieve great subtlety in his cast of players.

With the Gish sisters, however, there is something quite magic in the combination of their natural spontaneity, as it seamlessly blends in with the film to help develop a truly new and balanced dynamic between performer and film, which will flourish, especially in the films of Hollywood. In a sense, this combination could be said to create a new kind of hybrid - a union between the theatrical tradition of acting with the film form itself. And the Gish sisters brought a photogenic and psychological naturalism to the screen that Griffith quickly recognized would be a powerful combination.

While it might be going too far to declare that the Gishes invented what would become "the movie star," there is no question that their collaborations with Griffith would help accelerate the development of a new form of "cinematic" acting, rather than theatrical, in which the actors remain just as vivid - although not more so - than the rest of the montage in which they not only appear, but seem to help define.

This is very noticeable in An Unseen Enemy, which would be rather routine without them. We first see the pair, disconsolate orphaned sisters sitting aside one another in the lower right-hand frame of the composition of the opening shot. They are not weeping or wailing, but their sadness is palpable. The first action we see is Lillian’s gentle attempt to lift up her sad sister’s face with a fingertip under her chin. Dorothy simply closes her eyes and shakes her head, very subtly letting her know that any attempts to cheer her are useless.

These gestures are so beautifully natural and unaffected that they tend to draw the viewer’s attention to the girls more than if they had performed anything extraordinarily overtly emotive. Part of the beautiful sympathy between the two has to come from the fact that they are sisters, coming complete with a packaged code of empathy that later players will have to learn. But there is more - in each of the Gishes, similar as they appear here, there is a distinctive personality that resides in each. It is here seen in miniature, but with Griffith’s coaxing, the natural charisma and individuality will emerge.

Of course, it should be noted, that these two young women are among the most stunningly beautiful creatures to ever appear on a screen - before or since. Of course that will remain the fundamental essence of the female movie star right down to the present day. But it is not only beauty - there is an immediate sense of depth of character that positively illuminates each of them. It is that strange, unnamable quality that makes certain individuals so special - that every eye turns to them when they enter a room. There is simply no accounting for this kind of appeal in life, and when it is magnified upon the screen, the effect would soon prove to have a truly mythical impact. For better or for worse, from this moment on, it will be impossible to talk about movies without reference to their stars.

Of course this was already happening - both with Griffith’s actors and others. The point I wish to make is not so much an historically unique one, but rather something that is emblematic of the entire process of the development of movies. Under the tutelage of Griffith, over the next ten years or so, the Gish sisters would emerge as archetypal movie stars that would transcend their films - even transform them into something new. This is all part of the beginning of the phenomenon of the film star - and it is something that is perhaps inevitable given the admixture of the projected image and the unique human character.

Now I am not arguing that D.W. Griffith "invented" this phenomenon any more than many of his other contemporary developments. But just like so many other developments in the language of film, Griffith was the leader extraordinaire, and his example would soon be emulated so widely that it would become de rigeur practice for the entire industry.

To return to An Unseen Enemy, and the remarkable debut performances of Lillian and Dorothy, we go back to the opening shot of the two girls, sitting so plaintively together. Each of them, with their deep, haunting eyes and piles of thick dark hair, seem similar, but they are distinguished quickly by their reactions to one another. Lillian, the older, is wiser and solicitous of her younger sister - but Dorothy simply shrugs off her older sister’s indulgence of her - she is clearly her own person.

The plot, such as it is, has their elder brother (Elmer Booth) arriving with some money from their late father’s estate, which he deposits in a safe in the family home and returns to work on his bicycle. Once he is gone, the "Slattern Maid" (Grace Henderson) calls up her crooked old flame, played with a kind of brutal gusto by Harry Carey, the future western star of the 1920s. Together, they plan to get the money out of the safe.

A third element in the story is introduced by the departing boyfriend of Dorothy. As he arrives to say goodbye, he takes the girl away from her sister, alone into the corn field. Dorothy’s downcast eyes and snappy rebuke of a proffered kiss lend her an aura of girlish mystique, and when she offers her beau a handshake instead, older and wiser Lillian looks on disapprovingly. She knows it is wrong to leave the poor boy hanging, and her body language tells it all. Dorothy’s deep looks as she departs from the young man for the last time gives her away, and we have the whole story. Dorothy is the coquette, the little game player that would rather make herself the center of attention rather than to give herself away. Lillian is straightforward and empathetic, and she is perplexed and annoyed at her little sister’s childish behavior.

What is remarkable is that these characters are so quickly and roundly formed in just a few moments, by just a few looks and exchanges. Griffith has found two naturals here - perfect for cinema acting. Each of them can communicate volumes in a very brief space and minimum exertion. It is the subtlety that is extraordinary, and subtlety, largely delivered, will become perhaps cinema’s most valuable commodity.

Meanwhile, when the danger arrives, it is Lillian who first recognizes it, taking it quite seriously, while Dorothy initially responds as if it were all a joke. Lillian has to quickly correct her attitude with a hand gesture that alters her sister instantly. It is wonderful to watch their interplay.

The key link in the film is the discovery of a whole in the wall between the kitchen containing the safe and the bedroom into which the girls have been locked inside. As Lillian calls for help from her brother, the maid threatens the girls with the barrel of a pistol protruding through the hole. (Griffith uses one of his strongest close ups to date to establish this threat, and it is quite notable as a malevolent presence.) While all the suspense is being set up, the chief joy of the film is in watching the contrasting reactions of the terrified girls, as Dorothy plucks up the courage to return to the phone, as Lillian hangs in the background, helplessly horrified for the both of them.
As the maid begins drunkenly firing the pistol into the room, both terrified girls huddle together in a corner, their eyes flashing a kind of madness of frenzy - a true and powerful vision of innocence suddenly and violently violated.

Meanwhile, Brother and his boss commandeer a car, and we have the usual jump-cut rescue sequence that Griffith (and others) have already mastered countless times. (This one includes a kind of pivoting bridge that must be forced back into position, thus making the audience gasp even longer.)

We return to the girls’ room, and once again find it is Dorothy who makes the wide-eyed attempt to approach the gun - perhaps to grab it away - only to have it fire right in front of her face, causing her to collapse in fear.

Now, older sister Lillian becomes protective, and glaring at the horrific weapon, shields her sister with her own body. In doing so, she reasserts her primacy, both in intelligence and experience. We are led through these sisters into a world where real people, identifiable characters, like ourselves, can be seen to act in meaningfully distinctive ways in extraordinary circumstances. This will become part of the basic grammar of commercial cinema.

Watching the rest of the people in the film, one becomes aware that they are not bad actors - they are all quite good, actually. By this point, Griffith had definitely developed a method of directing actors who would be natural in front of the camera. It is just that the Gish sisters deliver a little something more - something perhaps undefinable. It is a unique charisma that is especially suited for the screen. Call it "star power" if you will. It is somehow, the ability to be larger than the movie in which you inhabit - something that requires the movie to grow with you or to be seen as ill-fitting and outmoded (as this one does).

It is the arrival of actors such as the Gish sisters that would, perhaps as much as anything, spur the creation of such a vast canvas as The Birth of a Nation, where both of them would play such large roles within a canvas where their cinematic power could be contained properly.

At the final shot of the film, both Lillian and the Brother force Dorothy to finally accept a kiss from her boyfriend - who has just saved their lives by getting them out of the deadly house. Lillian’s delighted face as Harron kisses the cheek of the reluctant, eye-squinting Dorothy is marvelously charming. Dorothy’s multi-meaning, character-revealing, eye-rolling look afterwards is sheer transcendence. Who suspected that one look could communicate so much!