'Broken Blossoms'

I was chit-chatting with The Unit the other night about Pablo Picasso and how he was born in 1881 and died in 1973.

Now, quite a number of people live until their 93 and old age isn't what made Picasso better than most people. But it was the time that he lived. He was old enough to see the machine of the Industrial Revolution trudge forward from its young age. He saw the turn of the century. He saw flight and automobiles become realities. He saw electricity and phones in few houses to every house. He saw a civil war in Spain. She saw two World Wars. The A-bomb. He saw countless movements in his own field. He outlived the Beatles.

I was also thinking about Lillian Gish. She lived from 1912-1987, dying at a ripe ol' age of 99. She saw her fair share of intrigue along the pathway of her life. Most importantly, she worked extensively with famed director D.W. Griffith, the guy responsible for "Broken Blossoms." There was this living museum piece taking TV jobs and movie roles until she was 93 or so and she had worked with the guy that made filmmaking a viable art form, at least for the time.

For the record, old movies are creepy no matter what. The scene with her in the closet and the dad chopping down the door. And then all the scenes with the "Yellow Man." Gives me the heeby jeebies.