Director: Lois Weber (with Phillips Smalley)
Year: 1913
Runtime: 0:10
Source: Youtube
Lois Weber is a fascinating, largely forgotten figure in the history of cinema. Not only is she an early female filmmaker, with an unusual auteur-level control over her works, but for a short few years she held a surprising amount of sway in the burgeoning industry. In 1916, she was Universal Studio's highest paid director, period. During her heyday she made 10 movies a year, but the vast majority of her films are lost. Unfortunately, this brief short is likely her only appearance on the list, but it highlights her technical innovations.
Weber probably didn't invent the split screen, but she used it extremely effectively in this tight little domestic thriller. The real highlight is a triangular three-way split, in which we see a distressed wife, played by Weber herself, calling her husband at work, while a burglar is about to cut the phone line with a knife. As with "24", a split screen only calls attention to our lack of control over the narrative. We have all the information, but like the husband, we're unable to act.
There are other tricks that Weber shows off here. There is a high-speed - 20 mph, high speed for the time - chase scene, and she uses stop-motion (I believe) to depict a car crashing into a hapless close-up pedestrian. However, it is hard not to acknowledge that Weber made a classic damsel-in-distress movie with herself as the damsel. There's a sad irony to that, but those were the times, and we shouldn't let it detract from her achievement, and make us wish that more of her work survived.
Year: 1913
Runtime: 0:10
Source: Youtube
Lois Weber is a fascinating, largely forgotten figure in the history of cinema. Not only is she an early female filmmaker, with an unusual auteur-level control over her works, but for a short few years she held a surprising amount of sway in the burgeoning industry. In 1916, she was Universal Studio's highest paid director, period. During her heyday she made 10 movies a year, but the vast majority of her films are lost. Unfortunately, this brief short is likely her only appearance on the list, but it highlights her technical innovations.
Weber probably didn't invent the split screen, but she used it extremely effectively in this tight little domestic thriller. The real highlight is a triangular three-way split, in which we see a distressed wife, played by Weber herself, calling her husband at work, while a burglar is about to cut the phone line with a knife. As with "24", a split screen only calls attention to our lack of control over the narrative. We have all the information, but like the husband, we're unable to act.
There are other tricks that Weber shows off here. There is a high-speed - 20 mph, high speed for the time - chase scene, and she uses stop-motion (I believe) to depict a car crashing into a hapless close-up pedestrian. However, it is hard not to acknowledge that Weber made a classic damsel-in-distress movie with herself as the damsel. There's a sad irony to that, but those were the times, and we shouldn't let it detract from her achievement, and make us wish that more of her work survived.
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