Traffic in Souls (1913)

Early exploitation film

After a brief hiatus, I'm back with a classic from 1913, Traffic in Souls.  The film was directed by George Loane Tucker and was one of the most expensive, but successful films of its time.

The lives of two sisters and their invalid father are shattered when one of the sisters goes missing.  The family fears for her safety as they are very aware that woman are being abducted and forced into slavery.  Can the police and the family find the woman in the bustling metropolis of New York?

This was one of the first feature films to focus on delivering a social message to the masses.  The movie feeds into a very real fear amongst women at the time: that they would be abducted and forced into prostitution. The film depicts in detail how the white slave trade works, following recent immigrants off of boats and trains and tricking them into their own capture.  Some of the methods used by the slavers seem lees than authentic, but that's to be forgiven in a 74 minute film. 

The movie also was one of the first exploitation films.  The advertising explicitly sold the sexual aspects of the movie (which seem downright quaint now) and the movie features misogynistic slavers, including one prepared to whip one of the slaves into submission.  Depictions of the white slave trade would later be banned under the Hays Code in the 1930s.

Technically, there is not a lot of innovative camera work here.  The camera basically remains in the same position for each scene.  There is an amazing shot of the head of the slavery ring descending the steps of the jail from an overhead angle and a well done pan across multiple jail cells.  Where the movie shines is in the editing. There are a lot of quick cuts between scenes and character and, despite the multiple plotlines, you never get lost.  The acting is solid, but never showy which lends the film an almost documentary feel.

On the whole, I really enjoyed this movie.  The first half showing the slave trade mechanics was much more interesting than the latter half.  The ultimate plot resolution involves a big coincidence and shows the local police methods in sometime monotonous detail ("let's show the viewer that every exit of the building is covered").  However, the film is briskly edited (a rarity in this time period) in a method rivaling D.W. Griffith and the plot structure following multiple characters reminded me of more recent films like Traffic and Crash.  Compared to most of the other movies I have watched, Traffic in Souls seems ahead of its time.

Watched on DVD from Netflix

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The Mothering Heart (1913)

A crazed Lillian Gish

Here's another D.W. Griffith film (this one clocking in at just over 23 minutes).  Lillian Gish plays a young woman who, against her better judgment, agrees to marry her boyfriend. After struggling to make ends meet, the man finally gains some success and takes his wife to a nightclub.  She is out of place in high society, but he manages to attract the attentions of another "idle woman."  The husband soon begins an affair with this woman and when his now pregnant wife finds out, she leaves him for her mother's house.  Ultimately, the wife begins raising the child on her own and the husband's concubine attracts the attentions of another man.  Seeing the error of his ways, the husband tries to reconcile.  But is it already too late for their marriage and... the baby?

All right, I'll admit it. This one felt like a chore. The story was just never terribly engaging. The entire relationship between the unnamed husband and wife just never really clicked, so his philandering does not come as a shock.

A couple of real positives are on display here, first and foremost being Gish's performance. This is the first performance I have seen in this marathon that is off-kilter.  I'm talking Gary Oldman in The Professional off-kilter.  Nicolas Cage in... well, everything, off-kilter.  When the wife discovers the other woman's scarf in her husband's coat pocket, she smiles, frowns, laughs and becomes angry over the course of seconds.  At the end of the film as she wanders through her rose garden, she looked (to me) exactly like Michelle Pfeiffer's crazed Selina Kyle in Batman Returns.

The most remarkable thing to share however is the ending. SPOILERS FOLLOW!  A title card appears on the screen saying "The baby ill."  That statement is like describing the great flood from the Bible as a slight drizzle.  The doctor comes to the house, dotes over the child for a minute and the baby dies.  The woman loses it and the husband, who had just seen his child presumably for the first time moments ago, mourns by the cradle. After destroying the rose bushes she so carefully tended during the movie, the wife reenters the house and is about to kick her husband out when she notices the baby's pacifier juxtaposed against his wedding ring.  As the movie ends they appear to reconcile in that moment.

Because of the inherent shortness of the piece, nothing about this ending feels earned.  The baby is on-screen for mere moments before you find out the baby died.  The husband is generally a jerk throughout and there is no evidence he's changed at all.  The wife has spent entire movie being put upon, has her baby taken from her and is rewarded with the moron that she spent the movie escaping from.

Technically, the movie feels both overly long (with repeated shots of the goings-on at the nightclub) and compressed (I could not for the life of me explain passage of time in this movie).  He does more referencing of earlier scenes than I've seen before, most notably when the husband first attracts the idle woman's attention and then later has the situation very precisely reversed in both action and staging. 

I love my Griffith, but beyond Gish's kooky performance which is great, this is one of the lesser works I've seen from the director.

Watched on YouTube
Picture from MoMA

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The Bangville Police (1913)

Things do not go well for this police car.

Here's a fun short that serves as my introduction to the Keystone Cops!  The first Keystone Cops short was produced one year earlier, but this one is considered to bethe first classic Cops film.

A maid encounters burglars in her barn and runs to call the police chief.  Awakened in his bed, the chief alerts the rest of the cops by firing off his gun.  The cops race on foot and by ineffective vehicle to save the girl.  Will they catch the bad guys...or a calf?

There's not much to say here.  For it's time, the editing is pretty quick and there are certainly hijinks, but there is nothing here that will be unfamiliar to a modern audience.  The most shocking thing to me was the characters randomly pointing guns in inadvisable directions and firing.  However, it's a Keystone Cops movie so there is never a sense of danger.

Only recommended for the diehards and others looking to kill about seven minutes.

Watched on Google Videos

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Twilight of a Woman's Soul (1913)

An example of Bauer's dramatic use of lighting

My first 1913 film is a real discovery for me.  Twilight of a Woman's Soul is the first film by Evgeni Bauer, a Russian filmmaker whose film career was cut short when, in 1917, he broke his leg and suffered medical complications leading to his death from pneumonia.

The story itself will strike modern audiences schooled in traditional movie plots as ridiculous.  A young, beautiful, rich woman named Vera finds herself lonely in her estate, even when surrounded by her wealthy friends.  When her mother takes her to help with the poor, she feels she has found her calling.  However, Maxim, the first man she attempts to help, rapes her.  As Maxim passes out drunk, Vera seizes the opportunity and kills him with a knife.  Later, she meets a handsome prince who falls in love with her, but will her secret tear them apart?

The astounding thing for me in this movie is the lighting.  There are repeated shots where the background is well-lit, but the foreground is in shadow and the movement of actors between the spaces tells you everything you need to know about their mood.  Bauer also creates sets that create transparent barriers between Vera and her upper-crust life, showing how lonely she is. Bauer is doing all of the heavy lifting to establish mood; the acting serves merely as a punctuation mark.

Technically, the movie also features a great, but subtle forward tracking shot, a well done special effectthat provides a ghost-like quality to the poor people in Vera's dream and a shot where the prince is momentarily replaced by the hideous man she killed through clever editing.  The director cuts from both the rape and the murder before they occu, leaving the events to the viewer's imagination.  It is hard to believe it is Bauer's first film.

As I said above, modern film lovers will have a really hard time with this plot.  Essentially, it paints this young woman as completely naive and hiding her secrets.  The poor are shown as liars and cheats who quickly turn their gambling table into a dining room table when the rich woman shows up to help.  In an early attempt to reveal her secret to the prince, Vera only points out that she was with another man, not that she kills him (presumably because a lower class death really didn't matter).  The prince finally learns the secret and forces her to leave.  He later regrets the decision and attempts to find her, but it is too late.  The movie saves all of its pity for the prince, not the victim of a rape and certainly not any of the lower class characters.

Still, the technical skill and the use of lighting and sets to tell the story make this a signpost for me in my cinematic journey.  I would have loved to have seen Bauer's growth in the 1920's.

Watched on DVD from Netflix.  48 minutes.
Photo from Observations on Film Art

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1913: Hooray for Hollywood!

A couple of notes before talking about 1913:

First, I'm only three years into this, and I am already completely hooked on these movies.  I am particularly fascinated watching D.W. Griffith essentially writing the rulebook for every director of the past century.  I've watched The Musketeers of Pig Alley three times and The Lonedale Operator twice.  I imagine there will be a Griffith movie on my list for each year just so I can continue to watch the progression of this amazing talent.  Which leads to...

Second, I am for the first time finding myself looking ahead anxiously to 1915 and Birth of a Nation, followed of course by Intolerance in 1916.  Birth of a Nation is intensely controversial, but also incredibly influential, so I am really being tempted to sprint for the next two years to get to my first real checkpoint. 

Now, 1913...

The center of the American film-making universe begins to shift from the east coast of the U.S. to the west and a newly-christened "Hollywood."  Of course, 1913 also gave us the first true film example of "sex sells" as Traffic in Souls is released.  According to IMDB, it follows a woman and her police officer boyfriend as they try to uncover a prostitution ring.  It was the most expensive film made to date, costing $57,000 (take that James Cameron!), but made $450,000.

Speaking of Cameron, 1913 saw the release of a film about an ocean liner sinking with spectacular special effects that became a worldwide phenomenon.  I am of course talking about the Danish film, Atlantis.  Guess you cannot go back to that well too many times.


As for movie firsts, 1913 featured the first custard pie in the face gag (A Noise from the Deep), the first feature length Western (Arizona), and the first movie featuring an all-Native American cast (Hiawatha).

What am I looking forward to watching this year?  Twilight of a Woman's Soul by the Russian director Evgeni Bauer is definitely on the list.  Bauer's life was tragically cut short by pneumonia after only four years of making films.  Griffith made dozens of movies this year, so at least on of his (not sure which yet).  Traffic in Souls is available from Netflix so I may watch that as well.  I'm sure there will be other surprises along the way.

Sources: filmsite.org, IMDB

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