Log in
Silent Garbo
The year 1912 was to mark the first film with Lillian and Dorothy Gish, “An Unseen Enemy” (one reel), directed by D.W. Griffith. Lillian and Dorothy Gish appeared in a dozen two reel films together during 1912 and several more during 1913. In The Man Who Invented Hollywood, the autobiography of D.W. Griffith, published in 1972, Griffith outlines his arriving at the Biograph Film Company and adding actors, including Mary Pickford,tohis ensemble. Griffith recalls, "One day in the early summer of 1909, I was going through the dingy, old hall of the Biograph studio when suddenly the gloom seemed to disappear. The change was caused by the prescence of two young girls sitting side by side and on a hall bench...They were Lillian Gish and Dorothy Gish. Of the two, Lillian shone with an extremely fragile, ethereal beauty...As for Dorothy, she was lovely too, but in another manner- pert, saucy, the old mischief popping out of her." Actress Lilian Gish, in her autobiography, The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me writes,"Mr. Griffith had rehearsed 'The Unseen Enemy' with other actresses, but after meeting us, he decided we would be suitable for the leads and changed the plot just enough to fit us."
Silent Film
Lillian and Dorothy Gish Biograph Film Company
Silent Film
Lillian and Dorothy Gish Biograph Film Company
Notably, Mary Pickford and James Kirkwood, who would later become her director, appear under the direction of D. W. Griffith in the one reeler "The Cardinal's Conspiracy", along with Mack Sennet as well as Griffith's wife Linda Ardvidson and actress Kate Bruce. The film was photographed by G.W. Bitzer for the Biograph Film Company.
The periodical Moving Picture World reviewed the film with an early description approaching genre theory. "The picture is of the costume kind. In other words, one, when looking at it, has gone to the pages of Stanely Weyman, Henry Harland or Morris Hewitt for his inspiration. We breathe the atmosphere of court life and are taken back, as it were, into a far more romantic period than the present." The periodical continued by regretting that they had viewed the film in "cold monochrome" rather than a more vibrant spectrum of pageant. Biograph Films had advertised the film in the previous issue of Moving Picture World, sharing the full page with Selig, Independent and Kalem studios. Paired with the film "Friend of the Family", Biograph proclaimed that in the film "The Cardinal's Conspiracy", "The subject is elaborately staged, comprising some of the most beautiful exterior scenes ever shown."In her autobiography When The Movies Were Young, Griffith's wife Linda Arvidson sees the film as the first important screen characterization for actor Frank Powell, adding him to the "remarkable trio" at Biograph of actors Frank Powell, James Kirkwood and Henry B. Walthall. Tom Gunning points to the film belonging to a period when a cinema of narrative integration in fact centered on characterization and accordingly developed film technique with that in mind. To accomadate that narrative integration and its movement to a versimilar acting rather than the florid, histrionic gestures of a filmed theater, Griffith would bring the camera into the story.
Silent Film Silent Film
Next Page of Stories