Lillian Gish as The Woman Who Rocks the Cradle
in "Intolerance" (1916)
Lillian Gish is generally considered to be the silent era's greatest dramatic actress. On screen starting in 1912 (and active into her 90s), she played a series of beleaguered heroines in films like "Broken Blossoms", "Way Down East", "Orphans of the Storm" and "The Wind". She did some of her best work for D.W. Griffith, who cast her in a pivotal cameo in his groundbreaking epic "Intolerance".
With a narrative of unprecedented scope and ambition, "Intolerance" tells four different stories from four different centuries simultaneously, cutting constantly between them. The connection is a recurring shot of Gish as a woman rocking a cradle, providing Griffith with a transition device and the film with something like transcendence.
Why Gish took such a small role in such an ambitious project when she was arguably Griffith's biggest star is a matter of some speculation, but there she is, never on the screen for more than a few seconds, endlessly rocking the cradle, an image of simple humanity linking the bloodthirsty ages, the eternal cinematic mother of us all.
