The Lily and the Rose (last reel missing)

Paul Powell: The Lily and the Rose (1915) starring Lillian Gish, Rozsika Dolly, Wilfred Lucas and Elmer Clifton.

THE LILY AND THE ROSE (Fine Arts Film Co., US 1915)
    Dir.: Paul Powell; cast: Lillian Gish, Wilfred Lucas, Rozsika Dolly, Elmer Clifton; 35 mm, 3032 ft (incomplete: last reel [rl. 5] missing), 44’ (18 fps), Library of Congress (AFI / Blackhawk Collection).
    English intertitles.
    Grand piano: John Sweeney.
    Viewed at Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): The Griffith Project 8, 16 Oct 2004.

Russell Merritt [DWG Project # 521]: "Paul Powell, a contract director at Reliance and then Triangle, caught fire with The Lily and the Rose. Although the last reel is missing, and what survives comes from a trimmed and re-titled reissue print, enough remains to reveal a well-paced, handsomely produced vehicle for Lillian Gish that in its opening scenes anticipates the charms of True Heart Susie and A Romance of Happy Valley. Louis Delluc thought that Griffith himself had directed it, and in 1921 called it Griffith’s best film (but, then again, Delluc also rated Dream Street over Broken Blossoms)."

"Delluc particularly responded to Gish’s performance as the headstrong, vulnerable country mouse obliged to cope with her husband’s infidelity. He considered her scene at her faithless husband’s coffin (part of the reel missing from our print) as compelling as the baptismal scene in Way Down East, thanks to Gish’s ability to register unsorted, contradictory feelings. But the film boasted other qualities that made this one of Triangle’s best-reviewed films. The elegant camerawork in particular caught reviewers’ attention. When Gish stalks her husband in the park – he is in a touring car with his mistress; she is trailing them in a horse and carriage – Powell takes a page from an identical sequence in Griffith’s The Drive For Life (Biograph, 1909) by using tracking shots to create visual tension as the camera keeps the two moving vehicles in perilous, unstable alignment. The third and fourth reels are saturated with more deep-focus shots which cleverly draw us into exploring rooms by degrees, shifting light sources and opening doors and drapes mid-shot to reveal new significant spaces."

"The Lily and the Rose was plainly meant as a prestige Triangle. It marks Gish’s first appearance with the new company, and introduced the popular Ziegfeld attraction, Rozsika (Rosi) Dolly to feature films. Rozsika’s veil dance on the rocky shore doesn’t wear terribly well (though it compares favorably to Carole Dempster’s imitation in Griffith’s The Love Flower), and trade reviewers were curiously restrained in commenting on it – whether out of gallantry, or fear of alerting the censors. But the veil dance was new territory for Dolly. She had made her career as one of the Dolly Sisters, where her specialty was dancing a novelty Tandem Act, she and her twin sister Yancsi (Jenny) dancing with props and elaborate look-alike costumes. Triangle was able to sign Rosi because Jenny had recently broken up the act in order to dance with her new husband, Harry Fox. Together, Jenny and Harry introduced their latest invention, the Fox Trot, while Rosi, turning to ballroom dancing, found a new career performing Spanish tangos. The Lily and the Rose came just at the point she was finding that new direction for her career. As such, Rosi’s Triangle debut with the veil dance was also her Triangle farewell."

"Part of The Lily and the Rose’s appeal was its elaborate production values. The front office used the film to inaugurate the studio’s new elevated, open-air monster stage, measuring 70 ft. by 160 ft. The stage is introduced as the Winter Garden theatre where Wilfred Lucas first sees Dolly perform. A few months later it became the foundation floor for Griffith’s Hall of Babylon."

"Along with Fairbanks’ The Matrimaniac, The Lily and the Rose remains Paul Powell’s most notable Triangle (this may be because these are the only two films that are left of his work: his other thirteen Triangle features are lost). Powell stayed with the company until the bitter end, directing Bessie Love and Constance Talmadge through spring 1917; then he pursued a career as a freelancer. His single prestige post-Triangle assignment was as Mary Pickford’s director for her first United Artists feature, Pollyanna; he also had a brush with the still-unknown Rudolph Valentino in two early budget films (also lost). Otherwise he spent the 1920s directing Agnes Ayres and low-budget programmers for fly-by-night studios. He retired from directing with the advent of the talkie era." – Russell Merritt [DWG Project # 521]

AA: *  A highlight. Actual duration of the screening 49'34"89 = 50 min.