Lois Weber

[osprey_archer]

In her heyday in the 1910s, Lois Weber was one of the most famous directors in America, ranked with Cecil B. DeMille and D. W. Griffith. But her career declined precipitously in the 1920s, and now she’s slipped (or rather been forcibly shoved) into the margins of film histories. (Although she’s had a bit of a renaissance lately. Here’s a nice article about her from the New York Times: Lois Weber, Eloquent Filmmaker of the Silent Screen.)

To be fair, the 20s killed D. W. Griffith’s career too: like Weber, he was regarded as a ham-handed, old-fashioned moralist, out of touch with the hedonistic youth of the Jazz Age. But at least he’s still prominent in film history books.

But Weber’s films are still more accessible than, for instance, Nell Shipman’s. The Blot (a film about the low pay of college teachers which has become timely again with the rising use of poorly paid adjunct faculty) is available on DVD - which Netflix has! So I should probably watch it soon, in case Netflix ceases to have it at some point, which has been known to happen with more obscure movies.

Shoes is about a poverty-stricken girl who has to sell her virginity to obtain the pair of shoes that will allow her to continue working and thus supporting her family, and it’s also available on DVD, although neither Netflix nor any of the libraries I can access have it, so for now it will just be the one that got away.

However, there are PLENTY of other Weber films on the internet, so I’m not going to be hurting for choice. Options include:

Suspense, which is the only one of these I’ve actually watched so far, for the simple reason that it is ten minutes long. It’s pretty good! Still effectively suspenseful 100 years on, plus it pioneered the use of a split screen

Hypocrites, a 49-minute film which had a nude scene, in which a naked woman is a symbolic representation of Truth, that scandalized audiences. This version has Portuguese subtitles, buuut it also has music and honestly I find it almost impossible to watch a film that is truly, completely silent.

Where Are My Children?, a 62 minute film about birth control (for) and abortion (against).

And there’s a partial print of Idle Wives, which was believed completely lost till the first reel turned up in the New Zealand Film Archive. (You know what would make a super fun mystery novel, in the vein of Possession? The detective characters discovers a treasure trove of lost silent film prints. Either the discovery is the mystery, ooooor the detective discovers them early on and then has to figure out how they got there - why they were saved - etc etc.)

Anyway, I couldn’t find a version with sound of this one, so I include it in case some more intrepid soul than I wants to take on half an hour of totally silent film.

There’s also a documentary short about Lois Weber’s career, directed by Svetlana Cvetko and produced by Elizabeth Banks (among others), who played Effie Trinket in the Hunger Games trilogy. The link goes to a trailer; I’m not sure how you actually see the short itself, unless it happens to show at a film festival in your area.

***

In this orgy of research about women film directors in the silents, I stumbled upon Marion Wong. In 1916, at the age of 21, Wong founded her own film company in Oakland, California, which made one film (The Curse of Quon Gong), and then folded because Wong couldn’t find commercial distribution.

Much of the film was lost, but two reels were rediscovered in a relative’s basement in 1969, and the link above leads to the footage from those reels. I suspect it will be an interesting but somewhat frustrating viewing experience: the movie was originally eight reels long, so we’re missing a lot. Some blessed soul has scored it, at least.

Comments

[asakiyume]

I was really curious about the Chinese American one, so I took a look, and--this is a tiny thing, but--I was amazed by how completely modern the guys **suit** seemed.

... I'll be back later when I've had a chance to take a peek at more of them. Cool stuff you're uncovering, for sure.

[sovay]

Shoes is about a poverty-stricken girl who has to sell her virginity to obtain the pair of shoes that will allow her to continue working and thus supporting her family, and it’s also available on DVD, although neither Netflix nor any of the libraries I can access have it, so for now it will just be the one that got away.

I saw it at the HFA in 2012. I suspect you would have enjoyed the presentation very much, because it was narrated by the benshi Ichiro Kataoka who did the voices for everyone. (rushthatspeaks said at the time that it was the most Japanese film they'd ever seen from an American studio, which accounts in part for why Bluebird Photoplays is nearly forgotten in this country and their impact on Japanese cinema is almost incalculable. The HFA screened Shoes because it was in Kataoka-san's repertoire, not the other way around.) It was melodrama, but melodrama worth seeing.

[littlerhymes]

I am loving how much film history you're compiling in these posts. It's so fascinating.

[skygiants]

I have been wanting for ages to write a mystery in which the murder happens in the background of a shot on some rediscovered reels of film and then they have to solve it!

[osprey_archer]

There is only one way to solve this and that is obviously an entirely series of mysteries involving silent films. *nodnod*

[osprey_archer]

It's just lying around the internet waiting to be picked up!

[osprey_archer]

I still haven't watched that one. Someday! Did you watch the whole thing, or just a bit of it to see the suit thing? If the whole thing, what did you think of it?

[osprey_archer]

Aw, that sounds delightful. A couple of years ago I saw a German silent film in theaters with live music (I forgot exactly which instruments; it was more than just a piano, though), which is not quite the same thing, but still it gives more of the feel of what watching these movies would have been like than watching them on Youtube at home.

[asakiyume]

I only watched the first few minutes, just to see characters come on screen, what they looked like, what the background was like, etc. It was fascinating, though; I can definitely imagine myself watching more of it at some point.