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Malini Fonseka: Completing the circle- by Uditha Devapriya Source:Island Though their performances seem maudlin to us now, the earliest screen actresses earned their living through tears and sobs. When the one-reeler began giving way to the two-reeler, directors began borrowing from Victorian literature. This was a literature of chaste women and rapacious womanisers, in which the heroine usually ended up falling into the wrong hands, having rejected her first lover, and the latter endeavoured to save, if not redeem, her. Not surprisingly, the first directors banked their careers on their actresses, turning them into mascots: thus Florence Lawrence became “The Biograph Girl”, while Mary Pickford became “Little Mary.” The films they starred in offered very little variety: they were all variations on the same stories and themes. But audiences loved them, and audiences kept returning. ...