In honor of her birthday (she would have been 116), TCM is running a number of Lillian Gish’s movies today. They just finished showing La boheme, an adaptation more like the sketches than the Puccini opera, I think. She makes a stunningly good Mimi with John Gilbert a wonderful Rodolphe. Not only was she a fabulous, moving actress of tremendous physicality but one of the most beautiful ever to grace the screen. The number of wonderful pictures the woman made, right up to The Whales of August when she was 93, is remarkable. If you haven’t seen them, try to watch one of her silents.
One of the things that struck me as I watched the movie, which was accompanied by a piano version of selections from the Puccini opera, is that until the advent of the phonograph the only contact that most people had with symphonic music or opera was in the form of piano adaptations. There’s a vast literature of such adaptations, mostly ignored now. IIRC Liszt was one of the great adapters.
