Knipselkrant Shoes (1916)

Featured Image and Page Header Image: Collection Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam. Copyright: Milestone Film & Video.

De verloren gewaande kopie van Shoes werd begin jaren negentig teruggevonden in de archieven van Eye Filmmuseum. De restauratie in 2010 en de dvd-release brachten deze film terug in de internationale belangstelling.

Synopsis

Het winkelmeisje Emma Meyer draagt haar karige salaris elke week af aan haar moeder. Hiermee onderhoudt ze het hele gezin, er blijft geen geld over voor de aanschaf van felbegeerde nieuwe schoenen. Haar werkloze vader verdoet zijn tijd met het lezen van romannetjes. Emma raakt wanhopig als ze ziet hoe een collegaatje wel goed gekleed gaat, dankzij de attenties van de louche cabaret-artiest Charlie. Emma wordt ziek doordat ze met haar kapotte schoenen door de regen loopt. Uiteindelijk zwicht ze voor de verleiding en zoekt ze Charlie op in het cabaret ‘The Blue Goose’. De volgende avond gaat ze naar een ‘Flat for rent’ met de bedoeling zich te prostitueren om zo eindelijk de lang begeerde schoenen te kunnen kopen. Bron: databank Eye.

“The heroine, working-girl Eve Meyer (Mary McLaren), is unable to afford a new pair of shoes on her meager wages. After several frustrating weeks of trying to scrimp and save, Eve is reduced to selling herself sexually for the sake of the shoes. She comes to regret this decision, bitterly ruminating over “what might have been” during the film’s somber closing scenes.”

Credits

Shoes. USA, 1916, b/w, 35mm, 57 min (5 reels). Productie: Universal Bluebird Photoplays. Producer: Lois Weber, Phillips Smalley. Director: Lois Weber. Scenario: Lois Weber (inspired by an article of Stella Wynne Herron in Collier’s Magazine). Camera: Stephen Norton, King Gray, Allen G. Siegler.With: Mary MacLaren/mentioned as Mary MacDonald (Eva Myer/Emma Meyer), Harry Griffith (vader), Jessie Arnold (Lillie), William Mong (Charlie).

Premièredatum NL: 26 juni 1916. Keuringsdatum NL: 2 juni 1916 (LP8408). Nederlandse titel: Mislukte levens/Schoentjes. Nederlandse verhuur (oorspronkelijk): Filma (Amsterdam) /Luxor Bioscoop (directie: K. Weening, Appingedam).

Vertoningen

• Nederlands Filmmuseum november 1992, programma ‘Ladies First’.

• 18 november 2012 in Eye Filmmuseum, met pianobegeleiding door Maud Nelissen. In het voorprogramma LE PAIN QUOTIDIENNE (een korte film van Gaumont), CHRISTMAS (een korte film van Vitagraph, 1912) en REFLET DU VOL.

• Eye Filmmuseum, 20 januari 2018. Pianobegeleiding: Martin de Ruiter

• Internationaal Filmfestival Assen, 9 maart 2019, in combinatie met The Price (Lois Weber, 1911). Muzikale begeleiding: Kevin Toma.

Shelley Stamp, ‘Lois Weber, Progressive Cinema, and the Fate of “The Work-a-Day Girls” in Shoes’. In: Camera Obscuravol. 19, no.2 (2004) pp.140-169.

“Working at Universal in the mid-1910s, where she garnered enormous respect and substantial creative control, Weber wrote and directed a series of ambitious features on highly topical, often deeply contentious, social issues of the day—including drug addiction, capital punishment, religious intolerance, and contraception. Though she would later distance herself from what she called the “heavy dinners” she produced at Universal, Weber was, for a time, at the forefront of progressive filmmaking in America, foremost among a host of filmmakers who sought to use cinema as a kind of living newspaper, capable of bringing discussions of complicated cultural questions to life.”

Shelly Stamp, ’Presenting the Smalleys – Collaborators in Authorship and Direction’. In:Film History: An International Journal, vol. 18, no. 2 (2006) pp 119-128.

Abstract: “This study analyses the discourse surrounding celebrity portraits of Lois Weber and her husband and collaborator, Phillips Smalley, arguing that metaphors of marital harmony that sought to explain the couple’s creative partnership ultimately could not contain the challenges their working relationship presented to dominant models of gender relations. Significant though Weber’s films were, the director’s elevated reputation had as much to do with the kinds of pictures she made, as it did with the type of woman she presented herself to be – married, matronly, and decidedly middle-class.”

Timothy Warren (2011), his blog Way Back Film Journal has disappeared meanwhile)

“There are many progressive-era concerns at play here: wages and workers-rights, living conditions of the working classes, consumerism and its effects on the working classes (especially young women), and, most obviously, prostitution.  The film is careful to keep the focus on these issues as they relate to young working-class women, however, by omitting the main concern of progressive reformers: alcoholism.

Eva’s plight is accentuated by her father’s unemployment, which is portrayed as being caused not by alcoholism, as one would expect, but by simple laziness.  Progressives saw a father’s alcoholism as a central cause of poverty: it made him unfit for work and he spent too much of the family’s meager savings on drink.  However, Eva’s father simply does not want to work.  He spends his days at home or in the park, and spends the little bit of extra money that the family has (money that could have gone to purchasing a new pair of shoes for Eva) on books.

It might seem odd that Weber chose not to include alcoholism in the narrative, but omitting it serves two dramatic purposes.  First of all, it keeps the focus on Eva and the elements of her life that she can control.  A discourse on the evils of drink would have been a distraction.  Secondly, the father’s success in finding a job on his first attempt, the same day as his daughter’s descent into prostitution, further underscores the tragedy of the situation and puts the blame on the entire family for depending solely upon her meager wages for their subsistence.

Released at the height of the Progressive Era, Shoes is a noteworthy dramatic film that is as interesting for the issues it tackles, and owes its effectiveness to the issues it chooses to omit.”

International newsletter of Eye Filmmuseum, summer 2011.

“The restoration in 2011 of Lois Weber’s SHOES is based on three different source materials: Two tinted nitrate copies from the collection of EYE Film Institute Netherlands (1150m and 85m) and one safety print from a shortened sound version called UNSHOD MAIDEN from 1932 (280m), held by the Library of Congress. The nitrate prints are affected by bacteria resulting in many white spots all over the images and severe nitrate deterioration. In the short sound version, the left edge of the image is cut off by the soundtrack. However, this print contains some short but important scenes, especially in the crucial last reel of the print. These are now reinserted to the film in order to reconstruct the most complete version. The edited material is then scanned for digital restoration. The images are stabilized and most of the bacterial spots are removed to allow a calmer viewing experience. The only available intertitles were the ones in the Dutch print. These are translated and digitally recreated, using the font of the Dutch titles as a reference. Finally, a black and white negative is recorded back to film, from which the new color print is struck, using the Desmet method, simulating the tints of the nitrate print.”

“The digital restoration of the Lois Weber film Shoes (USA, 1916) will premiere at Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival
2011. Although Shoes was photo-chemically duplicated back in 1990, severe bacterial infection of the nitrate print and other signs of emulsion decay made EYE consider a digital restoration attempt this time. The result, also including some missing footage from the abridged 35mm sound re-issue print held at the Library of Congress, is a more complete and less visually flawed version. Of course, where the emulsion was already gone, nothing could be done to repair the damage. The new version is a Desmet color print and uses the tints of the Dutch vintage print, and has newly inserted English inter-titles.

On June 26th 2011 Shoes is accompanied live by Maud Nelissen. Shortly after the premiere at Il Cinema Ritrovato festival the film will be presented at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival on July 17th.”

Vertoning van Shoes (1916) in EYE op 20 januari 2018

“Lois Weber was de meest succesvolle vrouwelijke filmmaker van haar tijd en van grote invloed op de stille cinema. Ze regisseerde en schreef veel baanbrekende films – drama’s waarin sociale en politieke kritieken werden gecombineerd met persoonlijke verhaallijnen. Haar beste films waren lang niet beschikbaar of in slechte staat. Daarom restaureerde Eye Filmmuseum Shoes. De presentatie van de nieuwe restauratie van de film wordt voorafgegaan door een (Engelstalige) lezing van Jane Gaines, professor Film Studies aan de Columbia University (VS) met de titel: ‘Lois Weber’s Shoes (1916) and American Lit: The Seduction of the Shop Girl’. Begeleiding door Martin de Ruiter (piano).”

The Twins (1911) teruggevonden

Deze korte speelfilm is geschreven en mede-geregisseerd door Lois Weber en ze acteert ook nog eens de dubbelrol van tweelingzusjes. De tweeling is gescheiden bij de geboorte. De ene zus wordt geadopteerd door een rijke familie, de ander door een hardwerkende naaister. Ze groeien op tot zeer verschillende persoonlijkheden. Door toeval komen de twee verhaallijnen bij elkaar, met een prachtig melodramatische wending volgt de ontknoping.

De film is tientallen jaren in de Desmet-collectie bewaard gebleven, maar was niet eerder volledig geïdentificeerd als een van de verloren gewaande films uit het oeuvre van Lois Weber. Vertoond op 26 mei 2019, in het kader van Sisters: 5thEye International Conference/ 10th Women and the Silent Screen Conference, met live muzikale begeleiding door Stephen Horne.

The Twins (VS, 1911, 15’). Regie: Lois Weber & Phillips Smalley. Productie: Rex Motion Picture Company.

Bronnen

• Norden, Martin F. (ed. 2019) Lois Weber: Interviews. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi.

• Stamp, Shelly (2015) Lois Weber in Early Hollywood, Oakland: University of California Press.

• Stamp, Shelley (2010) ‘Lois Weber in Jazz Age Hollywood’, in: Framework 51, no.2 (Fall 2010). URL:http://www.frameworkonline.com/Issue52/521stamp.html.

• Stamp, Shelley (2007) ‘Lois Weber and the Celebrity of Matronly Respectability’, in: Lewis, Jon et. al. (eds.) Looking Past the Screen: Case Studies in American Film History and Method, Durham: Duke UP, pp. 89-116.

• Stamp, Shelly (2006) ’Presenting the Smalleys – Collaborators in Authorship and Direction’. In: Film History: An International Journal, vol. 18, no. 2 (2006) pp. 119-128.

• Stamp, Shelley (2004), ‘Lois Weber, Progressive Cinema, and the Fate of “The Work-a-Day Girls” in Shoes’. In: Camera Obscura 19, no.2 (2004) pp. 140-169.

• http://www.silentfilm.org/archive/shoes

• http://www.wfhi.org/?s=weber (Women & Film History International)

• http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Lois_Weber.aspx

• http://www.fandango.com/loisweber/biography/p116181.

• https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/lois-weber-shoes-dumb-girl-of-portici-anna-pavlova

• http://www.fachinformation-filmwissenschaft.de/person/w/lweber.html.

• Cooper, Mark Garrett, Universal Women: Filmmaking and Institutional Change in Early Hollywood, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010.

• AFI Catalog of Silent Films (afi.com).

• Catalog of Copy Right Entries, Motion Pictures 1912 – 1939 Library congress, Washington 1951, p.766.

• Patricia King Hanson (ed.), The American Film Institute catalog of pictures produced in the United States, Feature films, 1911-1920, Berkeley 1993, p. 830.

• Griffithiana, Jrg.XIV, no. 40/42, October 1991, pp. 79-82.

• Frank N. Magill (ed.), Magill’s Survey of cinema: Silent films, Salem 1982, pp. 975-977.

• Variety 16 juni 1916

• Kunst en Amusement, jrg. 6, no. 24, 11 juni 1920

• Filma weekberichten 273.

• Foerster, Annette, Ladies First. Een programma met films van vrouwelijke cineasten, Catalogus Nederlands Filmmuseum, november 1992, p.11-12.

Context: more silent films about poverty.

• Martin Loiperdinger & Ludwig Vogl-Bienek (eds. 2011) Screening the Poor 1888-1914, Lichtspiele und Soziale Frage’dvd edition Filmmuseum (München), May 2011. Zie verder: http://bioscopic.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/poor-people/(Luke McKernan e.a.).

 Hollywood

• The Wicked Darling (VS 1919, 59’) Production: Universal Studio, Directore: Tod Browning. With: Priscilla Dean, Lon Chaney. Restoration 2004, based on a print of the Nederlands Filmmuseum. Score: Eric Beheim. Zie verder: http://www.lonchaney.org/filmography/109.html

• Regeneration (Raoul Walsh, 1915)

• Children of Eve (John Collins, 1915), with Viola Dana

• Outside the Law (Tod Browning, 1921), with Priscilla Dean & Lon Chaney, in a gangsterfilm situated in the Chinatown of San Francisco. See also http://mikegrost.com/browning.htm.

• Hungry Hearts (E. Mason Hopper, 1922). See also: Brownlow, Kevin, ‘Hungry Hearts: A Hollywood Social Problem Film of the 1920’s, in: Film History vol.1, nr. 2 (1987) pp. 113-125.

• Man, Woman and Sin (Monta Bell, 1927)

• My Best Girl (Sam Taylor, 1927)

• Seventh Heaven (Frank Borzage, 1927)

• The Crowd (King Vidor, 1928)

• films of Charlie Chaplin

Weimar films

• Die Freudlose Gasse (G.W.Pabst, 1925). English title: Joyless Street.

• Die Verrufenen. Der fünfte Stand (G. Lamprecht, 1925). English title: Slums of Berlin.

• Die Carmen von St. Pauli (E. Waschneck 1928). English title: Docks of Hamburg.

• Jenseits der Strasse (L.Mitler, 1929). English title: Harbor Drift.

• Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Glück (P. Jutzi, 1929).

• Razzia in St. Pauli (W.Hochbaum, 1932). English title: Raid in St. Pauli.