Not Enough

Early last month, Ms. G., our most impressionable reporter, took another of her patented plunges into the world of culture and art. She liked what she saw. Her notes:

Charming, lithe, animated, beautiful - and with all the energy of an adventursome young woman - Lillian Gish returned to the Upper Valley and the scene of one of her early movies, Way Down East (1920), to receive from Dartmouth, the Dartmouth Film Society, and Dartmouth Film Studies, the first in a series of annual awards for life achievement in American film.

Most of Dartmouth had only a fleeting look at Lillian G. at the award ceremony. Blair Watson chatted on about everyone who had ever contributed to the Film Society, which was celebrating its 30th anniversary, and Lillian came on stage only to accept a plaque and, in a very few words, to compliment us all: "If I'd ever gone to school, God willing, it would have been here." She then sat in the audience with us to watch her silent film, The Wind. This was my first silent film and I was enthralled, reading every title until the five miles I ran beforehand caught up with me. My head dipped a few times but only a few. Miss Gish was sitting directly behind me.

But I was more fortunate than most of the audience. Earlier that day, I attended a luncheon given for Miss Gish at the Hotel Coolidge in White River Junction. Before lunch, the local selectmen made her an honorary citizen, and some of the townspeople who watched Way Down East being made on the White River way back in 1920 reminisced about the cold. After lunch, in a dining room at the Coolidge where a square dance sequence in WayDown East was filmed, Miss Gish reminisced about her directors, from D. W. Griffith to her most recent, Robert Altman (The Wedding). She also told us about her present crusade to bring music and film together. She commented that we "depend too much now on the mechanics of film - film is to show the hearts and minds of the human race." She also said that "If all movies were like Turning Point, I would be happy."

I sat next to her manager. He wondered out loud if Miss Gish had remembered to wear her opals, and later he coaxed her into telling us a pleasant tale about Elizabeth Taylor in Africa.

But - for me at least - more over- powering than her silents, than her portrayal as a dying grandmother in The Wedding more awesome than all that - is her incredible energy and her concern and love for her art. The Film Society and the Film Studies Program made a wonderful choice for their first award. I wish we had all seen more of Miss Gish.

Lillian Gish floats in icy peril, D. W. Griffith directing, in Way Down East.