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136
FILM & TV TECHNICIAN
October 1957
U
WE LOST THE KEY"
" W^ITH the introduction of " speech into motion pictures we lost the key to people's understanding of each other."
That thought-provoking statement is the considered view of Lilian 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. Far 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
says a thing like that. She is quiet, relaxed and speaks thoughtfully and very modestly about a medium to which she is utterly
By
LILIAN GISH
in an interview with
Martin Chisholm
devoted. There is not the slightest doubt about that. Take this
LA STRADA
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 very troubled by doubts. I felt that perhaps 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 Lilian Gish's manner when she
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 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 scope for a revival of silent films ?
I put that question to Miss Gish. " I think ", she replied, " that what we should aim at is not, perhaps, silent films, but films in which instead of dialogue we marry music to vision. And when I say ' music ' I certainly do not
ยป
LILIAN GISH BETWEEN SHOTS AT SHEFPEBTON
[Still by John Jay]
exclude the music of words. The words of Shakespeare, for instance, are music in themselves, and has a finer film 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 that we were working in 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, and we 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 power and we felt our responsibility in its use deeply."
Lilian Gish thought for a moment, and 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 as it is today."